The World Menders cs-2

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  “The olz,” Farrari said angrily, “had a high civilization before the rascz came here. They built the old city of Scorv—those massive old buildings and also the Tower-of-a-Thousand-Eyes. This civilization didn’t originate with the rascz, and it won’t end with them.”

  The agents stared at him. “The olz… built… can you prove that?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Wow! Why doesn’t anyone else know about it?”

  Suddenly Farrari wondered if it mattered. It had been a long time since the olz built anything more complicated than huts. How much could they remember, and how long would it take them to relearn skills their race hadn’t used for uncounted generations? And if they could remember, could relearn—would they want to?

  He kept forgetting something he’d learned so long ago: the olz wanted to die.

  He stepped to the north parapet and looked toward Scorv, where a serious, decent, creative, hard-working people calmly harbored their refugees and waited—for Cultural Survey AT/1 Cedd Farrari to find the spark that would destroy them? “I’ve been out of my mind, or I would have turned back,” he said softly. “I caught Bran’s disease. I wanted to annihilate the rascz because they killed me, even if I had to annihilate the olz to do it.”

  An agent said bewilderedly, “How’s that?”

  “They aren’t monsters,” Farrari murmured.

  “The rascz? Of course not! Whoever said they were?”

  Farrari turned and slowly descended the ramps to the underground communications room. “Get me the coordinator,” he said.

  A few minutes later he faced Coordinator Paul’s familiar grin. “Well, Farrari? It’s been a long time.”

  “We’d better have a meeting,” Farrari said. “All the specialists who know anything that touches on this revolution of mine. Can you get me back to base tonight?”

  “Of course.”

  “What it amounts to,” Coordinator Paul said kindly, “is that you’ve worked a miracle to no purpose. You’ve created a revolution without a cause.”

  Farrari wrenched his gaze away from Liano. “Half a miracle,” he said. “And I didn’t realize what an evil half miracle it was until I stood there on the depot roof and looked at Scorv. As someone pointed out to me a long time ago, the average rasc has never seen an ol. Even if I could somehow transform the olz into a real army, they’d gain their freedom only by destroying a good and creative race of people. So now I don’t know what to do.”

  “Revolution without a cause,” the coordinator said again, savoring the phrase. “Except that it’s not really a revolution. You hand your ol something to carry and say, “March!” and when you have enough olz marching you have the illusion of an army—until the moment comes when it has to fight.”

  Farrari nodded glumly. “As far as I can figure out, the olz want to do only two things: worship the rascz, and die.”

  “It would seem so,” the coordinator mused, “and yet—when the olz march as a group, durrlz flee from them and soldiers ride past them fearing to arouse them with a threatening gesture. Strange. The olz who built the old city of Scory must have been mighty warriors to have their utterly servile descendants inspire such fear. Your revolution may be a failure, Farrari, but you’ve given this staff enough study material to last it for years if it can survive the shock of an ol revolt.”

  “All I want to do now is get the olz out of this safely,” Farrari said. “If they simply turn around and head for home, what will the rascz do?”

  The coordinator looked about the table, inviting comment, and each specialist seemed interested only in deciphering his notes. Liano was finding the far wall fascinating, and she continued to avoid Farrari’s eyes. Peter Jorrul, sitting in a motor chair at the side of the room, looked at Farrari.

  “Until they get home, I don’t know,” the coordinator said. “After they get home, it will depend on the individual durrl. Some may treat their olz better; others, when they get over being frightened, are likely to be extremely angry. I’m afraid there’s nothing that can be done about it.”

  “The problem,” Farrari said, “is that IPR has no one in a position to influence Rasczian thinking.”

  “That’s one of the problems,” the coordinator said, smiling wistfully “It’s been noticed before. In fact, my predecessor left me a memo about it.”

  Jorrul leaned forward and thumped the side of his chair with his uninjured arm. “If Farrari had stayed there as kru’s priest—”

  “No,” the coordinator interrupted firmly. “In that case there would have been no illusory uprising about which Rasczian thinking would need to be influenced.”

  “But he can go back now!” Joni said excitedly. “Have Dr. Garnt store his pretty face, dress him in the proper robes, and put him down at the city gate. Everyone will recognize him—his portrait is on display at the temple and in the palace and in half a dozen public places. And because he was a miracle, they never appointed a successor. They’ll think his reappearance is due to the ol crisis, and he speaks enough Rasczian now to walk right in and take over the country.”

  “Impossible,” the coordinator said. “That would amount to a permanent assignment. After Farrari’s disappearance, headquarters issued a regulation. No permanent assignments to CS men, temporary assignments only in the direct furtherance of their cultural studies. It saves you from a dubious honor, Farrari. On the kru’s death—and His Present Dissipated Majesty won’t last much longer—his priest becomes a Custodian of the Eyes and dedicates the remainder of his life to the care of the tomb of his lamented master. It amounts to imprisonment.”

  “I’ll risk it gladly,” Farrari said, “if there’s a chance of bringing about permanent changes in the condition of the olz.”

  The coordinator shook his head. “Permanence is a highly elusive thing.”

  “What could I do that would have a shock effect that the rascz will never forget?”

  “You couldn’t find a spark for your olz,” Jorrul grumbled. “Now you’re trying to find a shock for the rascz. I don’t believe in shocks and sparks.”

  “I’d like to see those carvings of the kru’s priest,” Farrari said. “Do you have teloids?”

  The coordinator sent for the teloids, and Jorrul rode away to confer with Isa Graan about reproducing the robes of a kru’s priest. Farrari snapped the cubes into a projector and studied the projections: a full-faced carving showing him standing meditatively behind the kru’s throne; two side views; and a dramatic representation of the moment when he had deftly bisected the alleged loaf of bread. He called for a mirror, and while the others looked on perplexedly he compared his ol countenance with the faces in the carvings.

  Jorrul returned, saw what he was doing, and said sarcastically, “You’re lucky. When the doctor restores your face, he’ll have a first-rate portrait to copy—and the rasc artists aren’t quite the realists I’d thought. They improved your looks considerably.”

  “I think I can make it do,” Farrari said finally. “In the proper setting the resemblance should be obvious.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jorrul demanded.

  “Impact,” Farrari said. “Influencing Rasczian thinking. The shock and the spark.”

  “Graan thinks he can duplicate the robes externally, but you’ll have to be careful who’s around when you Ike them off. There’s no possible way of finding out what they’re lined with. I told him to get started.”

  “Tell him to get unstarted. I don’t want his robes.”

  Jorrul thought for a moment. “You may have a point. No one knows what happened to the robes you left there. They probably enshrined them. It might be more effective if you wore the same apprentice costume you wore before and let them furnish the robes.”

  “No.”

  “We can discuss it later. The important thing now is to get Garnt started on your face.”

  “I like my face the way it is.” “What are you going to do?”

  “Just what you suggested. Present myself at the
city gate and save the rascz from a catastrophe they don’t know they have.”

  “As an ol?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re insane!”

  The coordinator was watching Farrari. “Will you need anything?”

  “Some ol agents to help with my army. The timing is going to be delicate.”

  “I meant—will you need anything in the way of special equipment?”

  “It isn’t exactly special equipment,” Farrari said, “but I’d like to have a loaf of bread.”

  XIX

  Farrari awoke at dawn and for a moment could not remember where he was. The cool, dry sand trickled between his toes when he moved them. Above him, one of the enormous paving stones protruded over the edge of the washout. He stirred lazily and eased himself the top for a glance at Scorv’s looming hilltop. Then he descended, made himself comfortable, and went back to sleep.

  The sun was high in the sky when he awoke again. He slid to the bottom of the washout where a pool of clear rainwater stood, undisturbed by traffic since it had fallen. He drank deeply, and then he paused for a moment to choose the path that would get him onto the highway with the most speed and least effort—so that if sentries were watching from Scorv, Farrari would seem to appear miraculously.

  He picked up his package, scrambled up the soft, caving side of the washout, and headed for Scorv. His stride was the swaying shuffle of an ol, and his package lay on his outstretched hands: a loaf of bread wrapped in a white cloth on which several black crests of the kru had been drawn meticulously. It would be the most trivial of gifts, this loaf of bread for the exalted kru, but it came from an extraordinary, an impossible donor—if Farrari lived to make the presentation.

  He moved along at his slouching pace, his eyes downcast and fixed on the road ahead of him. He soon began to perspire—an un-ol-like trait—and when the road detoured around another washout, which had left a low, swampy area, a cloud of biting insects pursued him and soon had him twitching miserably. An ol would not have noticed them.

  “But I’m the best non-ol available,” he told himself grimly.

  An ol walking that road on that day should have cast a gigantic shadow, but no one came from the city to investigate, no one met him. As he passed the cluster of buildings at the foot of the hill, willing himself not to look toward Borgley’s bakery, he had the strange feeling of having stepped backward in time to another incarnation when he had also walked this road with a gift for the kru. Everything looked the same. There was not even a guard or a sentry point at the threshold of the city—and an ol army was only hours away!

  Even the rascz looked the same until they saw him. Then they stopped to stare, some hurried to doors to summon family and friends, others followed him a short distance in silent awe.

  An ol. The first most of them had ever seen.

  The road pointed upward, and Farrari began the wearisome climb to the hilltop. Four times along the encircling road he crossed temporary bridges of planks laid over wide gaps cut deeply into the rock. They were old defenses, he thought, packed with dirt and paved over until needed and then quickly excavated. It proved that someone knew the olz were coming, and a small force stationed directly above them could defend those gaps, in the road against an army—if someone remembered to remove the planks.

  He gained the top and started down the long, broad avenue toward the Tower-of-a-Thousand-Eyes. It was so precisely as he remembered it that he seemed to hear Gayne’s voice: “Don’t gawk!” He kept his head lowered and saw as much as he could, and the only thing that clashed with his memory was a glimpse, once, of a costume that he did not remember seeing in Scory on his previous visit: a durrl’s.

  The avenue fell silent ahead of him, remained silent after he had passed. Those in the street backed away in astonishment; above his head shutters opened, faces peered down incredulously. He plodded on, the bread a leaden weight and his extended arms aching agonizingly, between lines of staring, astounded, speechless rascz: a scrawny, hairy, starved, almost naked specimen who bore scars of Rasczian authorship—their authorship—and who carried a gift for their kru. Farrari wondered if any of them would have the charity to think, as he had thought when he first saw a rasc, “He’s not a monster!”

  A troop of cavalrymen appeared from a side street, brushed through the crowd, and brought its grilz to a rearing, braying halt. The soldiers studied Farrari with a shock that deepened as they comprehended his mission, and finally they turned to provide him with an escort.

  He reached the temple square. The cavalry swung to the left to pass around the Life Temple toward the palace, where the kru normally accepted Farrari walked straight to the temple. He was determined to present this gift where he had presented the last, except that this time he intended to enter by the front door. He mounted a short flight of the strange, ramplike steps, crossed the broad terrace, and stood before the massive door. Eventually someone would tell the priests what was happening, they would confer and perhaps consult the kru, and a decision would be made.

  In the meantime, Farrari would wait. And wait. There were circumstances, he thought, when a training in ol mentality had its advantages.

  He waited.

  Behind him his cavalry escort returned and drew up uncertainly. A growing murmur told him that the square was filling with people. Then he heard the sharp clicks of many hooves, a long line of cavalry swept through the square, his escort followed it, and the crowd faded away in an instant. He knew what had happened: the ol agents had timed the advance perfectly, and the olz had finally been sighted moving across the wasteland toward Scorv. The citizens had gone to see for themselves or headed for home and safety. Farrari had the temple square to himself.

  The door opened.

  He expected an underpriest or servant, but two high priests faced him. He stepped past them, walked the length of the empty room with them trailing after him uncertainly, mounted the ramp, executed a flawless bow, and laid the gift at the foot of the empty throne. Then he rose, pivoted slowly, and demanded in Rasczian, “Where is the kru?”

  He had placed himself so that he stood in line with the relief carving behind the throne. For a suspenseful moment both priests stared blankly. Suddenly one recognized him and edged backward. Then the other started and turned, their eyes met for an instant, and they fled wildly. The kru’s miraculous priest had returned!

  As an ol!

  Farrari had read somewhere that the measure of a man could be gauged by the way he faced a miracle. The priests’ measurements were small indeed; the kru’s, microscopic. He arrived preceded by an irruption of guards and priests, and he trailed an interminable, reluctant tail of nobility. For a long time he stood immobilized with fear at the foot of the ramp, staring up at Farrari while the jittery priests urged him forward. He had gained weight since Farrari had seen him, and the new lines in his pouting jowls had not been placed there by the burden of his high responsibilities. When finally he stirred, his ascension to the throne was a moving form of collapse.

  With the high priests’ assistance he got himself seated. Farrari again sank into his bow and then stood motionless while the kru fumbled with the gift, dropped it twice, and finally with shaking fingers got it open. He tried to pass the bread to one of the high priests, who did not want it. A lesser priest was summoned, and he edged forward, seized it, and fled.

  Prompted by his priests, the kru made ostentatious throat noises and eventually produced a question. “What is your counsel?”

  Farrari met his eyes boldly. “I have come to petition for a redress of your people’s grievances,” he announced in a booming voice that made the kru wince.

  The kru nervously lowered his eyes. “My… people’s… grievances?” he muttered.

  Again Farrari boomed his words. He wanted as many witnesses as possible and no doubt whatsoever as to what he said. “Are not the olz your people, Excellency?”

  “The… olz… my… people,” the kru muttered. Then he started, jerked his head erect
, and exclaimed incredulously, “The OLZ my people?” Farrari met his gaze sternly, and the kru lowered his eyes and muttered, “The olz my people. What is their grievance?”

  “That Your Excellency is so badly served.”

  Again the kru jerked erect, but this time he was speechless.

  Farrari was watching the high priests. Clearly it had been a long time since those wrinkled old men had taken advice from anyone, and probably they, too, had never seen an ol; but obviously they believed in their religion or they would not have taken fright at the manifestation of a miracle. They would listen carefully when the miracle spoke, and if they believed what he said they would have the power to act.

  “Badly served,” Farrari went on, “by deputies who cruelly abuse your people.”

  One of the priests leaned forward and asked, “Cruelly abuse—how?”

  “By starvation, by the zrilm whip, by the spear.” He touched his own scars. Kru and priests stared until Farrari stirred self-consciously and felt the scars begin to itch.

  “What deputies?” the priest asked.

  “Your soldiers, your durrlz—all who serve you with your people the olz serve you badly.”

  They continued to stare. Farrari waited anxiously for something to happen. There had to be a set formula for concluding an audience with the kru, but IPR had not known what it was. Farrari hoped that it would not apply when the petitioner was a miracle.

  Finally he announced, “The kru redresses all just grievances.” He paused. “Redress these!” he snapped. Kru and priests winced as though he had struck them. He bowed again, backed down the ramp, and turned away.

  His last exit from this room had been through an eager, enthused crowd that pressed close to look, even to touch. Now all shrank from him. He marched to the door, waited until someone sprang to open it, and waited again until it crashed shut behind him before he resolutely began the long walk out of the city. The IPR specialists had told him that he would probably reach the temple unharmed, but they would make no prediction as to his return.