“I have feeling for the plants,” she said unwisely. “Half of them die before we get there. You can’t leave roots exposed to the sun that long without damage. If it wasn’t for the lorin helping us water them in, we’d lose the whole lot. Anyway,” she continued quickly as he opened his mouth to shout something, “Agriculture is Wand’s responsibility, not yours.”
“The pilgrimage is my responsibility!”
“I’ll talk to Wand.”
I thought Uncle Stance would explode. I said diffidently, “Can’t we discuss this like rational stilks?”
“There’s nothing to discuss! And anyway, I only discuss such matters in Council, not in a field with a defective girl! And another thing, the motorcart is my responsibility. Whatever Wand might say, I will not authorize its use on a mission of sacrilege!”
Silly May was in no way overawed by Uncle Stance; partly because, being the manchief, he had no authority over her. And partly because he was looking ridiculous, huffing and puffing like the motorcart itself, his face red as the fire under the boiler.
“The goatparent won’t be pleased,” she said sadly.
Mention of this religious figure, symbol of fertility, did no good at all.
“To Rax with the goatparent!” shouted Uncle Stance; then, as he realized the extent of his blasphemy, the scarlet of his face faded to a deathly pallor and he glanced at the sky as though expecting to see threatening horns.
But no retribution was visited upon him, which confirmed my belief that religious figures exist only in our minds. I derived a perverse comfort from the thought. Uncle Stance whirled around and strode off. Silly May grinned at me.
“If it wasn’t for people taking me for a fool, I’d be glad I had no memories stuffing my head with nonsense.”
“I don’t take you for a fool, May.”
She looked at me seriously. “That’s good, because I need a friend. And you’re a good friend to have. One day you’ll be manchief.”
“No, my cousin Trigger will be manchief.”
“Listen, perhaps I can’t look into the past, but that makes it easier for me to look into the future. Trigger hasn’t got what it takes. You’ll be manchief.”
I watched our present manchief striding back toward the village, full of anger and fear, and I wondered. The future is a worrying thing. We have such deep roots into the past, we hardly ever consider the future. Maybe we should. But maybe if we did, we’d frighten ourselves.
It was a prophetic thought.
DEVON STATION
The harvest came and the thanksgiving pilgrimage took place as it always had, and nothing more was heard of Silly May’s suggestion. We carried her little cuptrees and anemones to Newt Forest and planted them carefully, more than replacing the numbers of old dead trees. The lorin fussed around us, urinating on the new plants. The big anemones were quiescent. It’s a funny thing, but they always are during the thanksgiving. They withdraw their tentacles and sit there like vast stumps while we plant around them. Maybe they know, somehow, that we’re working for the good of the forest. Or maybe the lorin have a calming effect on them, like they do on us. But the anemones don’t like it when the arborist takes cuttings.
After the thanksgiving comes the harvest and then the drench, a time of dying vegetation, ceaseless rain, cold mists and ill-tempered adults. This is the time of year when the sheds beside the public heaters are stocked with a supply of hot bricks. There’s nothing like a hot brick in your arms to ward off the fears when you’re walking in cold rain. During that drench following my sixteenth birthday there were many meetings of the village elders, both men and women, and much shaking of heads and expressions of grim foreboding. As a young adult and nephew of the manchief I was allowed to attend such meetings, in fact Dad was quite insistent about it.
“You should be there,” Dad said one day, as he pulled on layers of fur and took a brick from the stove preparatory to sprinting through the rain to the ale house where the latest meeting was to be held. “You never know what your position at Yam might be, in the future.”
“My position will be cousin of the manchief when Uncle Stance dies.” What a prospect.
He stared at me longer than he need have done. “Maybe. Anyway, there’s talk of food rationing. We need the young person’s viewpoint.”
“Rax, Dad, the meetings are boring. And Trigger will be there. Get a young viewpoint out of him.”
He paused at the door. “Think, Hardy. Do you really want Trigger to speak on your behalf?”
He had a point. “I’ll drop by later on,” I told him. By then, I hoped, everyone would be so bored with the discussion they’d have started drinking and singing.
And in fact they had, but not quite in the way I’d expected.
I reached the ale house well after sunset to find it jammed so full that people were having difficulty bringing their mugs to their lips. They were singing, but not the jolly words of a drinking song such as Granddad Ernest might have sung to a Noss girl, but a doleful dirge that, after a moment, I recognized as Great Phu Deliver Us. A hymn. Religion, it seemed, had spilled out of the temple into the hallowed precincts of the ale house. Was nothing sacred?
And as the last melancholy notes died like poisoned drivets, Uncle Stance rose above the multitude, arms outstretched as he stood on the bar counter.
“My people!” he shouted.
Conversation, which was just starting up, hushed. Into the silence came the distinct voice of Wand, our womanchief and a stickler for accuracy.
“Only the men are your people, Stance!”
“I was speaking rhetorically. I’ll phrase it differently. People of Yam!” he roared. Stance is an impressive figure. He’s only medium height, but there’s something about the way he holds himself — upright, legs a little apart, chin high, gaze direct, as though he’s looking out to sea in a strong onshore breeze — that lends his words a momentous resonance. He seems to own his space; to belong wherever he is. He dominates. If Dad had tried leaping onto the bar counter to address his audience, he’d have cracked his skull on a low beam and dropped unconscious to the floor. Such an accident would never befall Uncle Stance, more’s the pity. “We must pray,” he said. His expression, which had been commanding, became instantly humble.
People bowed their heads. Stance launched into the miscellany of evasions, euphemisms and superstitions which the converted call the Only Truth. Did Stance believe all this himself? I don’t think so; he may have been a pain in the butt, but he was intelligent. He called upon Drove and Browneyes (mere legends) to mount the Great Lox (meaning the sun, Phu) and draw the world from the clutches of the Many-Tentacled Ice-Devil (meaning the dead planet Rax) and to bless us with everlasting sunlight — which, if Phu had obliged, would have made Yam a very hot place indeed. He called upon Ragina, queen of the ice-devils (the real ones in the pools) to forsake her legendary lover, Rax, and throw her lot in with Phu. He proposed an unlikely scenario in which Ragina lifted off into the sky like a human space shuttle, seized Rax in her arms and bore him off to a distant location where they became, I suppose, what Mister McNeil calls a binary system. He called upon the goatparent to give birth to high-yield crops. The audience loved it, raising their fingers in the sign of the Great Lox.
Afterwards he joined Dad and I, flushed with success.
“Good sermon, huh, Bruno?”
“Worthy of our templekeeper himself,” said Dad. “Although I understand the goatparent specializes in bearing people rather than root crops.”
I’ll explain about the goatparent, sometimes called the goat-with-two-mouths. It’s our templekeeper’s version of your Adam and Eve with the advantage that we don’t have to worry about who created it. It always was, and is. Its purpose, as it sits up there on a cloud, is to churn out people. It’s been out of work a long time because we’re perfectly capable of churning out people ourselves. Frankly, the goatparent strains my credulity, but Mister McNeil is quite careful not to der
ide it. One might almost think he believed in it, and him a human, too. I once asked him, “Why do you humans still have religions, when you know so much?” And he thought about it for a long time, and just as I was expecting something really profound, he said, “For fun, I guess.”
Stance said, “The goatparent is the symbol of fecundity. Of bounty.”
“So now we’ve prayed, everything’s going to be all right, is it?”
“I doubt it.” Reality returned like a kick in the groin, and my uncle looked sick.
“I missed the start, Uncle,” I said. “What happened about food rationing?”
“I’m considering a journey to Devon Station, Bruno,” he said, ignoring me as usual. “Before the Freeze sets in, if possible.”
“Tell Hardy about the rationing, Stance,” said Dad, may Phu bless him.
“As of now,” he said impatiently, staring over the top of my head, “Grain will be rationed to one half cup per person per day, or the equivalent in bread. Now, regarding this journey, Bruno, I have high hopes the humans at Devon Station will offer us assistance.”
“Shouldn’t we talk to Mister McNeil first?”
“You think so?”
“That’s the protocol, Stance,” Dad murmured.
He always seemed to be rescuing Stance from political gaffes. They rarely argued, and never in public. I sometimes wondered if Stance, as a boy, had been as idiotic as his son Trigger is now. If he had, he’d certainly grown out of it. Standing foursquare and still dominating the room despite the gangling figure of Dad beside him, he announced in ringing tones, “We shall consult Mister McNeil!”
And the people, turning toward him, made noises of agreement. Stance was right. Stance knew the protocol.
Yam Wand sidled up. “A sound move, Stance. The humans have unlimited technology. There’s little point in us starving when help is less than a day’s journey away.”
I caught Dad’s eye. He grinned at me.
Uncle Stance began planning the trip to Mister McNeil’s residence. He liked to plan, did Stance. Mister McNeil lived less than half a day’s journey away, but the trip had to be planned and organized. Nothing must be left to chance.
The sea level always drops a little during the grume, but now it was high again and backed far up Noss inlet. The runoff from the moors flowed frighteningly dark, swift and deafening whenever the road took us close to the riverbank. Phu had contracted to a small orange eye in the pale sky, giving no heat at all. The cold mist laid a sheen of moisture on our clothes, and our breath blew as steamy as the motorcart’s chimney as we headed for Mister McNeil’s. We huddled together at the forward end of the cab, close to the firebox: Dad, Uncle Stance, Wand, Trigger and I. Uncle Stance was at the tiller and a poor job he was making of it, dropping the heavy iron wheels into every available pothole. We swayed about on the footplate, clutching at the metalwork and each other. Tempers were frayed. We were not a united negotiating team.
“For Phu’s sake, Stance, let Bruno have the tiller!” yelped Wand, as a wild lurch nearly threw her off the footplate.
My Uncle did not reply, maintaining a firm grasp on the tiller and staring fixedly ahead, a picture of resolute confidence.
I was becoming obsessed with the right-hand side of the road, which hereabouts fell off sharply to the raging torrent below. I took advantage of the next lurch to move to the left of the cab. If I judged we were heeling over too far, I could jump off.
“I think we’re here, Stance,” said Dad a short while later. I caught a glimpse of a faint track diverging at right angles from the Noss road.
“Stop!” shouted Wand. “Back up! Back up, you fool!”
Uncle Stance was not at his best in reverse. The motorcart came to a juddering halt as he hauled at the brake lever. We all toppled forward, grabbing at projections to avoid burning ourselves against the firebox. Still with that air of confidence, Uncle Stance spun the reversing screw.
It would have been better if he’d remembered to shut off the steam first. The motorcart began to accelerate backward before he got his hands back on the tiller.
Everybody froze. Nobody said anything. Tide and river meet hereabouts, and below us a deadly maelstrom boiled.
Then dear old Dad grabbed the tiller and swung it in the nick of time, and we roared backwards up the slope to Mister McNeil’s residence, a dramatic arrival in clouds of steam and fierce recriminations.
“You’ll all have a beer after your trip?” If Mister McNeil guessed the negotiating team had fallen apart, he didn’t show it. “Or maybe a mug of stuva?”
“A skin of distil would be more like it,” I heard Wand mutter, but not so that Mister McNeil could hear. He never serves us anything stronger than beer, and lets it be known that humans disapprove of us drinking anything distilled, although what business it is of theirs I don’t know.
He waved us to chairs and sat down himself, smiling and big. It’s always the first thing I notice about Mister McNeil, the bigness. Not just in height, although he is a head taller than even Dad. It’s the heaviness, the muscularity, even the loudness of voice that we notice. In numbers you humans can be really overpowering. And you show your teeth when you smile, which can be somewhat alarming until we get used to it. Otherwise there are not many physical differences between you and us — which I found surprising in those days, since we evolved on different worlds.
The second thing I notice about Mister McNeil is the kindliness. He is a good man. He has our best interests at heart, and he always does what he can to help.
“Good to see you people.” For the first time I noticed the Nowhere Man sitting in the shadows. What was he doing here? At the sight of him Uncle Stance froze with mouth open in a comical expression of dismay.
Dad nodded to the Nowhere Man with a faint smile. Dad doesn’t faze easily. Trigger stared, fascinated by this living example of evil. Wand sniffed and looked back at Mister McNeil as though for an explanation. I wondered how I was reacting, and tried to keep all expression from my face. I’d never heard of the Nowhere Man actually doing anything wrong. And personally, I think he looks much like anyone else. Even if he has — as they say — one webbed foot and one normal, he keeps them covered. It’s the simple fact of his existence that bothers people.
Suddenly everyone began to talk at once, then everyone stopped and an embarrassed silence followed. Finally Wand said, “I will outline the purpose of our visit.”
It was a crude, abrupt start to negotiations. Disconcerted, I scrutinized the contents of the room. Everything looked strange, because it all came from Earth. I’d been inside a few human residences at Devon Station and they were nothing like this. They had stuff from all over the Galaxy on the walls, and quite a lot of our own stilk artifacts. I visited one place that actually had a whole fishing skimmer with poles and nets hanging from the ceiling.
But there was nothing of our world in Mister McNeil’s residence. It was as though he didn’t want to acknowledge the place.
And yet he liked us. I could sense it. Not in the way one might like children, although he might think of us that way because your technology is so far ahead of ours. And not in the way one might like an animal; a favorite lox, for instance. No; he liked us as people. It set him apart from some other humans I’ve met.
He followed up Wand’s remark adroitly, shifting to other matters. You humans consider it bad manners to come straight to the point. For a few moments he spoke of progress on the moor, and the mine the humans had sunk there some generations ago. “Grade A ore,” he was saying. “It promises to be a very profitable venture.”
“Who for?” asked Wand rudely.
“Everyone. Once the mine’s broken even, profits will be shared equally between humans and stilks. That was the deal when we took our option on the land, and we stand by it.”
“Will our share allow us to buy human technology?” Dad asked.
“If that’s what you want.” Mister McNeil looked dubious. “Yo
u may find you prefer your present level of development. It’s not all good, the human way of life.”
“But you don’t starve,” said Uncle Stance.
“It’s that bad, is it? I’d heard the harvest was poor.”
“Those profits you were talking about,” said Wand. “We could buy machines to bring more land under cultivation.”
“Guns and vehicles for hunting,” added Uncle Stance.
By now Mister McNeil was looking positively alarmed. We’ve been reading human facial expressions for many generations, and I saw anxiety in his eyes, and something else. Sadness?
“You call it stardreaming, your ability to call on the memories of ancestors.” he said. “You should stardream carefully before you start talking machinery. And you know we humans have a policy of non-interference. It might be permissible for us to teach you sciences to enable you to learn to build your own machines, in due course. But we can’t leapfrog the normal course of a society’s development. Possibly your society is not the kind that develops. Often there are stabilizing factors in a society that inhibit progress beyond a certain point. Your preoccupation with the past, for instance.” He sighed. He was speaking words, but his mind was elsewhere.
“So what good is our share of profits?” asked Wand harshly.
“If the worst came to the worst, you could pay to import food. But this is just one harvest. Sit the winter out. See how things go.”
Dad said, “I’ve stardreamed. This is a long-term trend.”
“You’re right, Bruno,” said Uncle Stance.
“I think we need food now, Mister McNeil,” Dad said quietly. “And I hear there are villages in much worse shape than us.”
The human replied, “The mine hasn’t shown a profit yet.”
“Then lend us the food against future profits.”
“We don’t have it. We only carry food for our own population, around six hundred people. You’re asking us to feed the whole world from our storerooms?”
Pallahaxi Page 25
