— the rope dropped, whipping snakelike in the shaft. Clutching the torch in his left hand, Cleve wrapped the rope twice about his right wrist and gripped its end. It would not be comfortable, being pulled up a shaft by one arm for an unknown distance, but — there was no light in Oridorna. It was not needed.
“Pull,” he called, and he was pulled.
His fingers and his arm and his shoulder and pectoral muscles ached by the time he felt a hand touch, then grip his right wrist; he had no way of knowing just how long that slender shaft was, but it was very deep indeed.
He found himself surrounded by eyeless, naked people. The women — except for the two purple-clad girls who came forward and knelt at his feet — wore nothing. The men wore baldrics like Zaire’s, and hewing or stabbing weapons of various sizes and descriptions. Many wore the little pouch he assumed held the rocklight projector — “deathbox,” Zaire had called it; “sidsorn”: “sid” (“death”), plus “sorn” (“small chest for storing valuables”). Others did not; either they were short on the awful weapons or they were carried only by a select few.
“This is Cleve of Earth,” Zaire said, in a loud voice, turning as he spoke so that none would miss his words. “He is of the outer world, but he is neither an Orimor nor a Tree-man. He was a captive of the Orisans, although they did not enslave him. He has returned to us Baise-daughter Gaise and my sister Jaire, whom the Orisans enslaved. They were the personal property of Shilaat of Orisana, and served his table!”
The gathering of eyeless people murmured, and Cleve wondered at the two women’s station among them.
“Though he could have been pulled up, he returned, unarmed, to slay the man who killed Vaine. He is a brave man, and truthful, and our friend. I have given him Vaine’s deathbox, and I recognize him as a warrior of Oridorna.” He turned to Cleve.
“My sister and Baise-daughter Gaise still kneel at your feet, Cleve of Earth. Do you free them?”
“I — free them?” Then Cleve realized; he had saved both of them. Not from death, perhaps, but from the living one of slavery. “I release you from debt, both of you,” he said, taking a hand of each Oridorn and helping her to her feet. They stood before him a moment, facing him. Then Gaise turned and rushed to a man and woman standing nearby, both with seamed old faces. The trio clasped each other.
Zaire wrapped his arm around his sister. “Come, Cleve,” he said, and followed them. They went surely through the darkness, he following with the torch. It was pitiful, this land of Oridorna within the mountain. He had thought there was little that was civilized or beautiful about the Oris an existence; they were glorified cavemen. Here there was less glory. The Oridorns lived in utter darkness. They wore no clothing; it was needed neither for warmth nor walls. The paper-colored people moved like ghosts through the dark, their mouths slightly open.
But he soon learned that they possessed art: It dealt in textures, and he was barely able to appreciate it, with his eyes open, or as an experiment, closed. They were a courtly, quiet people, too, far removed from the cavemen of Earth’s misty past. Cleve felt depressed among them, sad. They were locked here forever, with exits only above and below them, and those exits were closed to them by deadly enemies. Even with the deathboxes, the Oridorns would never win their way down into Orisana; an armed man had but to stand still and wait for one to come near, and to kill him. A few of the death-boxes in the hands of the people below — and Oridorna and the Oridorns would vanish forever, wiped out in what might be called a genocidal mercy killing.
But they were human beings, and they were calm, and quiet, and unhurried. And they were happy. Never having had sight, never having been sightless people among seeing ones, they did not miss the eyes denied them from birth. And they “saw,” both with their fingers and with the other sense with which they had been provided as compensation for their unneeded eyes. Dwellers in eternal darkness, they were one of nature’s strangest creations.
Once the world outside learns of them, Cleve thought, they will never be the same. Man cannot stand to leave something such as this alone.
He vowed silently that none would ever know of Oridorna from his lips.
He repeated the vow aloud, as he sat with Jaire and her brother and their grandfather, an ancient man named Zaide. Their father had died in a battle with the Orisans, a few months before Jaire’s birth. Their mother had remarried and died, two years ago. Jaire was sad, without the relief of tears; she had been captured by Orisana three years ago, and thus returned to find she would never see her mother again.
“Thank you, Cleve,” Zaire said. “I believe you. A man who would admit to having a deathbox when he could have lied would not lie to me now. I believe that Cleve of Earth will not reveal our existence to the outer world, although we do not fear it and its people. You are our first contact with it, aside from the Orimors, who do indeed live outside. If all are as you — ”
“Don’t place me on a pedestal,” Cleve told him in some embarrassment. “I have killed. I will lie if I must, I have no doubt, although I have not found it necessary yet. But — all those Outside are not as I am. You say you do not fear the outer world, Zaire. Do.”
“There are things we must tell you,” Zaire said.
Cleve looked up as a woman entered with their supper; she was Jaire’s aunt, the sister of her mother. Her husband had died, and she had moved back to this cavern of the old man Zaide, the Keeper of the Rocklight.
“After we eat,” Cleve said, “or as we eat. Pardon me, but the food is here — and I am famished.”
Zaire’s hand came over to touch his wrist, then grip it “No, my friend Cleve. Before we eat. Listen. We take no slaves, as do our enemies, both above and below. We have never attacked them, we fight only to defend ourselves. Within these caverns we have vast quantities of the mushrooms you ate below, in Orisana, save that here they are much thicker and grow to far greater size. We have no fish, no llicos. No animals. As you know, the people of Orisana have weapons they take from the Tree-men, and fish and animals and wood they can obtain by leaving their land through the water. Too, they have slaves from both the Tree-men and from us, as well as swords, also taken from us. In our turn, while we take no slaves, we have obtained minute quantities of fish from the Orisans we have been forced to kill, and tools and gut and hide. The swords of Orisana — these come from us, but we have them from the Orimors — who have them from some other peoples, Outside.”
Frowning, Cleve nodded, automatically. He knew that even were he to spend the rest of his life with these sightless people he would never cease nodding, shrugging, gesturing; making all the visual aids to speech that served all men in all places. Except in Oridorna.
“I understand all that, Zaire.”
“Pai,” Zaire said; he prefaced many utterances with the Andorite affirmative word. “But I have not done. Could you live without meat?”
“I suppose so. Many people have, and do, although I have never tried.” Cleve eyed the savory meat on the stone plate before him. It was uncooked, but he thought he’d have no difficulty getting it down. He had tasted meat but once since he came with Siraa from the river.
“Yes — let me put it this way, then,” Zaire said. “We have found that we cannot survive on mushrooms alone. We sicken and die.”
“I can understand that.” Cleve looked around at them. All of them, Zaire and Jaire and the old man Zaide and the aunt — all of them sat stiff and attentive. He could not be sure, for these people were nigh-expres-sionless, but they seemed to be worried, apprehensive. “Man needs more than a diet of mushrooms for survival.”
“Yes. I am glad you understand, Cleve. The Orisans and the Orimors do not. We know this from those few we have captured — they were horrified, and we were sorry to have to decide we could not let them go back to their people. Thus, we have told no one in centuries. When I say ‘we’ I am speaking of my people historically, you understand, not necessarily about this body.” Zaire struck his bare chest with a closed fist.
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br /> Cleve waited. There had to be more. Zaire wanted to tell him; he had initiated this one-sided conversation. Cleve saw no need to prompt him. He had always been thus, on Earth as on Andor. Gordon had noticed it immediately, that perceptive man now so far away.
“But we have no meat,” Zaire said. “There is no animal life in Oridorna, and we cannot gain the Outside to hunt, as the Orisans and the Orimors do.”
“I see … ” Cleve saw without seeing.
“But we must have meat.”
Cleve gazed down at the meat on his plate. The Oridorns must have meat to survive. But they could not; there were no animals here, and they had access to none. But — here he sat at table with them — figuratively speaking; each of them had an individual stone that served as a private table. And before him was meat, savory and fresh. Uncooked, true, but rich, nourishing meat. Flesh.
He stared at it. Raised his head to look at them, one by one. Looked down again at his plate. He was sure he knew the answer, but he did not want to believe it. Centuries of custom, of taboo, rebelled in his brain. No! “What — what is this on my plate, Zaire?”
Zaire sighed. “Meat, Cleve. That which is necessary to our survival, to the survival of a people kept locked up here by their enemies.”
“What is this on my plate, Zaire?”
“Meat, Cleve of Earth. The flesh of the men you and I secured to the rope to be brought up here to my waiting people.”
Cleve shot to his feet, staring about at them.
Cannibals! Like the Tree-men, they were eaters of human flesh! Somehow — somehow it was even worse that the flesh was not cooked, that it had been hacked raw and dripping from the bodies of the men he and that Oridorn warrior had slain, and served up to them, minutes later — still warm.
“Which of you is eating the body of your lately slain countryman?” he demanded.
“None of us,” Zaire said quietly. “That is his family’s privilege. It would not be right for — ”
But Cleve, his stomach churning, his brain reeling, was already striding away from his new friends and their ghoulish meal.
15 - The Keeper of the Rocklight
Cleve had lain long alone, watching the torch burn down, thinking. He did not know where he was, who belonged to this little cavern that became a pocket forming a ten-by-ten room with a thirty-foot ceiling. None seemed to claim it; none stopped him as he strode past feasting Oridorns — who looked up as he passed, parted lips quivering, as if following him with the eyes they did not possess. He had walked long, and far, and had turned into this side tunnel and found himself in this stony room with a pile of white, silken-soft pelts on the floor.
He had lain long alone, and he had turned it over and over in his mind. It was — ecology.
The pelts he lay upon, shielding his body from reposing on solid granite — the silken fur came from men, or near-men, the Orimors. Apparently they raided some peoples living lower down the mountain, or at its foot; from them they took scimitars and food. Too, there were animals in the mountains, also providing food for them. Their pelts were their natural compensation for their climate; without them they could not have survived atop the mountain. The pelts in turn provided both garb and comfort for the other peoples, the Orisans and the Oridorns, who had access to no animals. True, the Orisans did. But they were in deadly danger when they left their cavern — in darkness, always in darkness, for the warming sun was death to a race of albinos. The swords, passed down in combat from one level to the next, enabled the Orisans better to cope with the savage Tree-men and the occasional animals they met Outside.
Without attempting to, they provided the Oridorns with the fruits of their forays; rope and bones and fish skin and llico hides and tentacles, and pouches for the Oridorn weapons — pouches taken from the Tree-men.
It was what is called a balanced ecology, using the term only slightly differently from the biologists’ intent.
But there was a flaw in it. The Oridorns, like all creatures everywhere, must fight for survival. And they must have meat. But — there was no meat available to them. And their mushrooms provided no protein.
Nor, Cleve told himself, was there meat available according to Earthside taboos. But of course there was meat. Man did what was necessary; there was no physical, no biological reason for him not to eat the flesh of man. To the Oridorns locked within the mountain it was necessary: They ate. And they survived.
Learning, ages ago, that this was a strong taboo among other peoples, his Oridorn host had felt compelled to explain to Cleve, to warn him. Zaire had not had to do so; they could have allowed their guest to eat his fill. They could have told him later. Or they might never have told him. Cleve wondered if he would ever have known, were it not for Zaire’s honesty and consideration.
He watched the flickering ghost patterns from his torch as they danced and writhed on the ceiling. He lay on his back, staring, his hands behind his head.
These were probably the most moral people he had ever encountered. They believed in honesty, and practiced it despite its consequences. Surrounded by slave takers, they took no slaves. Surrounded by fiercely warlike peoples, they fought only in defense. They accepted a stranger — a very different stranger — without question. They were totally honest, he mused rather bitterly, to a fault! He didn’t have to tell me, damn him!
But they broke a taboo, a part of the moral code of nearly every people on Cleve’s planet, and apparently, on this one.
Because they had to, they ate human flesh.
Perhaps they did not have to, and there were some who might well say so. They could die.
A vegetarian cast into the desert with a cow or a goat — would he eat the animal, breaking his code, or die?
Well, Cleve told himself, he might die. But that isn’t a true analog, not a fair one. That man is a fanatic, one man alone with a personal belief different from others’. These people are members of the race of man, however different. Their choice is simple.
Eat of the flesh of thine enemy, or die.
Thine enemy’s flesh? But somewhere, somewhere in this collection of unlit caves and stone corridors and tunnels called Oridorna, a family sat together, eating a member of that family. He had been someone’s son, someone’s grandson, someone’s brother; perhaps also husband and father. Was that no different? This was not merely — “merely” — eating the dead enemy to survive. This was — monstrous.
Cleve gave the ceiling a rueful smile. Monstrous? No, it was obviously a part of their society, a ritual. Eating him, Zaire had said, was “his family’s privilege. It would not be right for” others — Cleve finished the sentence — to eat him. That must be approximately what Zaire said, or would have said, as his guest stalked away from his board.
The family privilege. With honor, Cleve mused; with honor and ceremony, no doubt, and in peace they eat the body of their beloved son. In whom, doubtless, they were well pleased.
True, he’d known people who practiced cannibalism once weekly, sometimes more often, in concert, in a ceremonial rite. But they might not have done so had their repast been warm flesh rather than a thin wafer of white dough!
Yes, he thought. And I did not believe, and I stayed well away from such ceremonies. But I did not turn from them in disgust! Autres temps, autres moeurs — other times, other customs. Yes, and other places, too, have customs differing from one’s own. The men of Europe, kissing one another, in an act totally unacceptable among Americans, so nervous of their manhood; the men of India, eschewing beef, even unto starvation, so that once three millions died in a single bad season — surrounded by cattle; the men of the Arabic lands, belching as loudly as possible and never touching their food with one hand, the one reserved for wiping themselves; on and on.
One may either accept these customs, he mused, or reject them. But what could be more childish than to express disgust at the customs of other people? One can either be a human, a civilized being, or one can be a missionary, expressing disgust at a happy people’s n
atural nudity and swiftly teaching them about clothing and guilt — while, incidentally, infecting them with venereal disease and pointing out to them what promiscuity is, and divorce.
The women of ancient religions, called “temple harlots” by Christians, had as much right to call Christians “cannibals.”
You are a child, he told himself. You have insulted a good people, who were honorable enough to warn you of their custom, a custom necessary to their survival as individuals and as a people.
1 am a warrior, he replied to his own small and not-so-still inner voice. I have always been a warrior, an atavist, on Earth and on Andor. I am not a sociologist, trained to accept other customs, other mores, no matter what form they take.
Cleve sighed. He would go back, and he would apologize, and he would eat — mushrooms.
Starting to roll over to get up, he realized: Go back? He had no notion of the way back! He had merely wandered. He did not know where he was, and had no idea how to return to where he’d been. He was lost.
“Cleve?”
Her voice was soft, as all their voices were soft, and sad, as he had made it sad. She had doffed the hated purple robe, a symbol of her servitude in Orisana. She stood before him as all her people stood, clothed only in dignity and honor and the clothing provided by her Creator.
I did not rebel at that, he told himself angrily. 1 accepted their nudity with no qualm, no problem. What is it in us men that so horrifies us at the notion of eating the meat of one particular animal, the beast called man?
“Jaire?”
“I — ”
“Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. I must apologize to your family.” He rose, and she came quickly to him, against him, a girl like other girls, different as Siraa was different, and yet different again from Siraa, for Jaire possessed no eyes and no vanity. She held herself tight against him, her face against his chest.
“It is as they said in Orisana,” she said, her voice muffled, her lips soft and tickly as they moved against his bare chest. “You are so warm! No wonder Siraa wanted to keep you always with her! No wonder the others were jealous and spiteful!”
Chieftain of Andor Page 11
