by James White
It was like some kind of freemasonry, Martin thought, with secrets of increasing importance being entrusted to the favored few who showed themselves able and willing to maintain the Teldin status quo. His sarcasm was probably lost in translation as he said, “And the Masters know everything?”
“Not everything,” the Teldin said, showing more of its teeth. “As yet they don’t know about you.”
Chapter 8
ONCE again Martin got the impression that this particular Teldin was a potential rebel. “I have the feeling that you do not want my presence reported to the Masters,” he said, “Is this so?”
“That is correct,” Skorta said. “My reasons are, of course, selfish. Until official cognizance has been taken of your presence on Teldi, I am at liberty to learn as much as possible from you before the Masters rule on the factuality of your information. I expect that much of what I learn will have to be officially forgotten, not committed to writing, and will die with me. The Masters must consider the mental well-being of their slaves as the highest priority, and the simple fact of your presence here implies a way of life infinitely better than our existence on Teldi.
“Fortunately I can justify my delay in reporting you,” it added, “because of initial confusion regarding your status and the necessity of educating you in our ways lest you inadvertently commit a crime, such as insulting a Master.”
It was not lying, Martin thought admiringly, but it was certainly bending die truth into some fancy shapes.
“I had intended showing you the school now,” Skorta went on, “but it would be better if I drove you back to your vessel so that you can bring it here.”
“No problem,” Martin said. “My vessel can be moved here without me being on board.”
“There is a problem,” Beth contradicted. “Not an urgent one, so you can let your friend show you its school. A cloud of denser meteorite material is due to arrive in about fifteen hours’ time. According to the computer, the area for twenty miles around your city will be well and truly clobbered, so when I move the lander over there I suggest you excuse yourself politely and get the hell out.”
“The lander’s force shield will protect…” Martin began.
“It will be a very heavy bombardment,” Beth said firmly, “and you will be safer in the hypership. There is something very odd about this Scourge, and the things the computer is telling me about it just don’t make sense. I’d like to go over the data with you.”
Martin did not reply at once because he had followed the Teldin into a tunnel whose walls and ceiling were smooth and completely unlike the roughly chiseled rock surfaces he had encountered earlier. He could see small areas of tiling still adhering to the walls, and many horizontal markings which were thin and pale green in color and which passed through small spots of dull red. He aimed the visual pickup in his helmet at them and paused for a moment so that Beth would receive a clear picture, then hurried after the Teldin.
“Copper wiring and ferrous metal staples holding it in position,” he reported excitedly. “The insulation has rotted away and all that is left are the pale green and red corrosion traces. This is a much older section of the school, dating from the time when they had electrically generated rather than vegetation-produced lighting. That could have been hundreds of years ago.”
Beth sighed. “So you intend staying there until the last possible moment?”
“At least,” Martin said.
They came to an opening whose sides bore corrosion marks which suggested that it had once possessed a metal door. Inside, there was a large, square room rendered small by the presence of about thirty Teldins, who ranged in size from just over one meter to the full adult stature of three meters. The walls were hung with tapestries which were brightly colored, finely detailed, and dealt with various aspects of the Teldin anatomy.
His arrival caused an immediate cessation of work and a lot of untranslatable noises. He was introduced as an off-planet slave gathering information on Teldin teaching methods for its Master. Skorta told them to restrain their natural curiosity and resume work.
It was difficult to distinguish the teacher-in-charge from the adult pupils, Martin found, until he discovered that the more advanced students aided in the teaching process by instructing the less knowledgeable ones. He stopped beside two of the youngest, one of whom was immobilized and rendered speechless by practice splints and a tight, mandible bandage, and asked how long it took for a fractured forearm to heal.
“Thirty-two days on average, Senior,” the young Teldin said promptly, staring at the Federation symbol on Martin’s collar. “Longer if it is a compound or multiple fracture, or if it is sited at a joint or is complicated by severe wounding. If the accompanying wounds are improperly cleansed, putrefaction takes place and the affected limb must be removed.”
Martin estimated the age of the Teldin medical student to be the equivalent of a ten- or eleven-year-old of Earth. “I thank you for this information,” he said, and added, “How long will it be before you are a fully-qualified medical slave?”
Everyone had stopped working again and was making untranslatable noises. Anxiously he went over his question for implied criticisms or hidden insults and could not find any. In an attempt to retrieve the situation he said the first thing that came into his mind.
“I would like to answer some questions about myself and show you my vessel.”
They were all staring at him in absolute silence. It was close on a minute before one young Teldin spoke.
“When, Senior?”
“I do not want to interrupt your study or rest periods,” he said. “Would early tomorrow morning be convenient?”
When they were in the corridor a few minutes later, Martin asked, “Did I say something wrong?”
Skorta made an untranslatable sound, and said, “They would have observed your vessel at a distance, in any case. But now you have issued an invitation from your Master to view the machine closely and ask questions about it. The invitation extends, naturally, to the members of other classes. I trust, stranger, that your vessel is strongly built.”
Martin was about to deny that his Master had issued the invitation through him, but then he realized that a mere slave like himself would never have been so presumptous as to issue it without permission.
“You misunderstand me,” he said. “I was asking if I’d said something wrong when I questioned the medical student about the time needed to qualify. On my world such students spend one-sixth of their lifetimes in study before they are allowed to practice medicine on other people. Some of them continue to study and find new cures for the rest of their lives.”
“What a strange idea,” the Teldin said, stopping outside the next classroom’s entrance. “You are correct, Martin, I did not understand you. Your question to the student was a nonsense question. Badges of ownership are not worn in school since the students are considered to be too ignorant to be good slaves, but the only medical student there was the teacher. The students will ultimately belong, if my memory serves me accurately, to the Masters of Agriculture, Communications, and Peacekeeping. Medical slaves are invariably teachers, and new medical knowledge must be sought only at the direction of the Master of Medicine.
“The incidence of injury and disease must be very small on your world,” Skorta continued, “if students waste so much time studying medicine exclusively. On Teldi we study it as soon as we are able to read, write, and calculate. On Teldi injury and death are not rare. On Teldi everyone is a doctor.”
They had completed the tour of the classrooms when Skorta turned into the entrance to a long, high-ceilinged chamber whose far wall was more than two hundred meters distant. Against the wall Martin could see, dimly by the light of the ever present luminous vegetation, a raised dais or altar with a cloth draped across it.
“This is the Hall of Honor,” Skorta said, and began a slow march toward the opposite wall. “Here the slaves renew their promises of service and obedience to our Masters every day,
or assemble for punishment or censure and, once a year, to graduate to higher levels.”
It had not always been the slaves’ Hall of Honor, Martin thought excitedly as he looked up at the great, curving ceiling and along the regularly spaced tunnel mouths where it arched down to meet the floor on both sides. He asked for and obtained Skorta’s permission to use his helmet spotlight.
It showed lines and patterns of corrosion running along the floor and into the tunnels. The marks were widely spaced and suggested heavy metal rail supports rather than wiring conduits. The walls and ceiling were also covered by strips and patches of corrosion, and as they walked toward the dais they passed shallow trenches in the floor which were filled with powdered rust. Suddenly, Martin’s mouth felt so dry that it was difficult to speak.
“This… this place is old” he said. “What was its purpose before it became the Hall of Honor?”
He already knew the answer.
“It is recorded only as hearsay.” the Teldin replied, “But the hearsay is unapproved, forbidden as a matter for discussion by all levels of slaves. I know nothing other than that it was our first protection against the Scourge.”
Suddenly Beth’s voice was in his other ear.
“It was probably one of the causes of the Scourge in the first place,” she said angrily. ‘That hall was once a storage and distribution facility which supplied missiles via the tunnels to less deeply buried launching silos. But you must have spotted that yourself. It certainly answers a lot of my questions.”
“I spotted it,” Martin said. “But causing the Scourge… I don’t understand you.”
“That’s because you haven’t been trying to make sense of the things the computer is saying about this ring system.”
Normally such a system was formed as a result of a satellite or satellites approaching too closely to the primary and being pulled apart by gravitational stresses, she went on, and the debris being strewn along the plane of the moon’s original orbit. Continuing collisions would eventually cause the pieces to grind themselves into a uniformly small size. But at the present stage of the process many large pieces should have survived the collisions with the small stuff, since the probability of the relatively few large chunks of the moon colliding with each other was small.
The material orbiting Teldi contained no large pieces of debris.
“Then the ring has been forming for a long time,” Martin said, “and the process is far advanced.”
“No,” Beth said firmly. “The Scourge has been in existence for an extremely short time, astronomically speaking. The process began one thousand one hundred and seventeen years and thirty-three days ago, and was completed forty-seven years and one hundred and two days later.”
“Are you surre?”
Beth laughed. “For a moment I thought you were accusing me of using hearsay. The computer is sure and I’m sure, and you know which one of us is omniscient.”
“Are there any missiles left?” Martin asked. “Any traces of radioactivity in a forgotten silo somewhere?”
“None,” she replied. “The sensors would have detected them. They must have used them all.”
She resumed talking as the slow march toward the dais continued, but Martin’s thoughts were leaping ahead of her words as piece after piece of the Teldin jigsaw puzzle fitted into place. The reason for the Scourge and the fatalistic acceptance of it was now plain, as was the cause of the pathological distrust of everything which was not experienced first-hand, the rigid stratification of the slaves, and the thinking done from the top which was so characteristic of the military mind. Finally there was the planet-wide catastrophe which had driven the surviving population to shelter in such installations as this, and brought about a situation which was in essence a military dictatorship.
The Hall of Honor and one-time missile arsenal was certainly a key piece of the puzzle, but the picture was not complete.
“I must speak with a Master,” Martin said.
“But there’s no need!” Beth protested. “Sensor probes have been dropped on this and other cities. We have more than enough data on the ordinary people of this frightful planet. They are resourceful, ethical, hardworking, long-suffering, and, to my mind, wholly admirable. We should say so without delay. Our assessment can be based on an interview with one Teldin, remember, and we were not expected to spend a long time on this assignment. I” say that the slave levels are hi all respects suitable and should be offered Citizenship following reorientation training to neutralize the conditioning of the Masters.
“The slave owners, from what we’ve learned of them, don’t stand a snowball’s chance. Our Masters, the Federation, will not abide dictators who…”
“Wait,” Martin said.
They had stopped before the dais which, now that he could see it clearly, consisted of a single cube of polished rock measuring just under two meters a side, with a large flag apparently covering the top and hanging down in front. The section of the flag visible to him was dark blue and bore the same design as that which appeared on Skorta’s bracelet. The stone was too high for him to see the top surface, until he was suddenly grasped above the knees and under the elbows by four large hands and hoisted into the air…
… And saw the symbol of ultimate authority.
Unlike the richly embroidered flag, the sword looked excessively plain and functional. Simply and beautifully proportioned, it measured nearly two meters long and had a broad, double-edged blade which came to a fine point. Its only decoration was a small, engraved plate on the guard, which reproduced the design on the flag. Martin stared at it until the Teldin’s arms began to quiver with the strain of holding him aloft, then he gestured to be put down.
“It is the sword of the Master of Education,” Skorta said very quietly. “My Master died recently and a new one has yet to be chosen.”
Martin was remembering the long, sharp blade of the weapon and the staining he had seen at its tip. He wet his lips and said, “Has it ever been… used?”
“The sword of a Master,” it replied in a voice Martin could barely hear, “must draw blood at least once.”
“Is it possible,” Martin asked once again, “to speak with a Master?”
“You are an off-world slave,” the Teldin replied, emphasizing the last word.
It was the last word, in fact, because neither of them spoke during the long walk back to the base of the cliff where Beth had already moved the lander. Martin had a lot on his mind.
Chapter 9
HE had programmed the force shield to interdict inanimate objects and remain pervious to living beings. As a result, it was not the timer which awakened him but the excited voices of more than two hundred young Teldins who were surrounding the lander. The cliff-face and city were still shrouded in pre-dawn darkness, except for the intermittent illumination provided by the Scourge as it drew incandescent lines across the sky. He increased the intensity of die exterior lighting and went outside.
“I can’t answer all of your questions at once,” he said as his translator signaled overload, “so I will tell you about my vessel and some of the worlds it has visited…”
Except for a few of the older ones who muttered “Hearsay” they became very quiet and attentive. He began talking about planetary environments which were beautiful, terrifying, weird but always wonderful, and on the subject of the Federation he said only that it was a collection of people of many different shapes and sizes and degrees of intelligence who helped each other and who wanted to help Teldi.
When these youngsters grew up, Martin thought, it was likely that they would never again be able to regard their Teldin way of life with complete acceptance. And if die Teldins were not judged suitable for Federation citizenship and were left to fend for themselves, it seemed a particularly lousy trick he was playing on them by talking like this.
“I can’t predict where exactly they will hit,” Beth broke in urgently, “but that area is in for a bad time. Cut it short!”
“I�
��ll answer a few questions, then send them to shelter,” he told her. “The mountain on this side of the valley will protect us, so there’s no immediate…”
The sky was lit by a sudden flare of bright orange, the sound of muffled thunder and the ground seemed to twitch under Martin’s feet. He broke off and looked around wildly, then up at the cliff. Everything seemed normal.
‘That was a big one,” Beth said, her voice rising in pitch. “It hit close to the summit directly above you and started a rockslide. You can’t see it past the shoulder of the cliff. Tell them to…”
But Martin was already shouting for them to run for the shelter of the school. Nobody moved, and he had to explain quickly, so quickly that he was close to being incoherent, about Beth and the orbiting ship and its instruments which had given advance warning of the rock-fall which they could not yet see.
Still they did not move-they were dismissing his warning as hearsay. He angled one of the tender’s lights upward to show the top of the cliff and the first few rocks bouncing into sight over the edge.
They began to run then, too late.
“No, come back!” he shouted desperately. “There’s safety here. Get back to the landed”
Some of them hesitated. Without thinking about it Martin sprinted after the others and managed to get ahead of them-they were young and their legs were slightly shorter than his-and wave them back. There were about twenty of them outside the protection of the lander’s force shield now, but they were slowing down, stopping. He did not know whether they were simply frightened or confused or, since his recent demonstration of foreknowledge of the rockfall, they believed him when he said that the area around the lander was safe.
The first rocks struck the ground between the lander and the school entrance, bounced outward and rolled toward them. Three of the Teldins were knocked over and another was down hopping and crawling on four hands and a foot, dragging an injured limb behind it. Martin pointed at the glowing line on the ground which marked the edge of the force shield.
