Fletcher Pratt
Page 19
* The rest of this paragraph is totally illegible.
We emerged from the station into a perfect wilderness of tall, cabbage-like leaves that reached far above our heads.
Still farther up I could see the room of the building that contained the farm, and behind the rows of plants ran a line of electrical connections. Interested, I asked their purpose, and was told they were for the electrification of the growing vegetables.
Among them also I could occasionally see a figure clad in the gray of the Biyamo, moving slowly and apparently aimlessly about.
"You see what the farms are," said my companion in a low tone as he led the way to a building which rose suddenly from among the greenery, "these people do nothing for all their lives but tend plants. They have no life, no amusements."
"Aren't they unhappy?"
"Why should they be? They are Biyamo, made so by the tensal for punishments in many cases." I shuddered a little at this.
We met in a small room in the interior of the farm building, one side of which was taken up by the reducing apparatus with which the Murashemans produce the alcohols from the raw material—the basis of all their Chemistry. Perhaps a dozen of us were gathered there, mostly Hetheleg, although I saw one Bodrog ideograph of a style unfamiliar to me and one of the Davex besides us two Thutiya.
A middle-aged man rapped for order and began, "We have gathered here, my friends, in the name—" when all at once there sounded from the door the shrill notes of a whistle. In a moment we were in wild tumult. There was a rush for the door, but before anyone could reach it, it burst open with a shattering crash and the officers came in....*
* Again a period of illegibility. What follows appears to be mostly vituperation. A phrase or two emerges . . . "brutality of these minions . . ." "held incommunicado . . ." The word "trial" occurs several times, and it is a pity that the mss. is so bad at this point, for Schierstedt's account of a Murasheman criminal process could not fail to be both interesting and suggestive. I give the continuation at the earliest point where connected reading is possible.
... this means one of two things, either I shall be given treatment under the tensal and leave this room a changed personality, the same only in name, to become a humble and unintelligent laborer with my hands or I shall be degraded to the ranks of the Thutiya Bunyo to become an outcast, despised even by the lowliest workmen of Murashema. In either case my doom is sealed.
For the time to write this narrative and the promise to send it back to the Earth I am indebted to Koumar Ashembe, who has steadily stood my friend, even in my great guilt and trouble. I can only hope that it will fall on some spot where it will be found and preserved and ultimately revealed to the world. I am certain that it will find the world, so much confidence I have in Murasheman science. But this is my only hope that some memory of Alvin Schierstedt will be preserved among my friends. Farewell.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE