Blind Man's Lantern

by Allen Kim Lang

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Geetu Melwani and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

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  Transcriber's note.

  This etext was produced from Analog December 1962.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that theU.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

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  Blind Man's Lantern

  by

  Allen Kim Lang

  Successful colonies among the stars require interstellar ships--but they require, also, a very special kind of man. A kind you might not think to look for....

  Illustrated by Schelling

  _Walking home in the dark from an evening spent in mischief, a young man spied coming toward him down the road a person with a lamp. When the wayfarers drew abreast, the play-boy saw that the other traveler was the Blind Man from his village. "Blind Man," the youngster shouted across the road, "what a fool you be! Why, old No-Eyes, do you bear a lantern, you whose midnight is no darker than his noonday?" The Blind Man lifted his lamp. "It is not as a light for myself that I carry this, Boy," he said, "it is to warn off you fools with eyes."_

  --_Hausa proverb_

  The Captain shook hands with the black-hatted Amishman while the womanstood aside, not concerning herself with men's business. "It's been apleasure to have you and _Fraa_ Stoltzfoos aboard, Aaron," the Captainsaid. "Ship's stores are yours, my friend; if there's anything you need,take it and welcome. You're a long way from the corner grocery."

  "My Martha and I have all that's needful," Aaron Stoltzfoos said. "Wehave our plow, our seed, our land. Captain, please tell your men, whotreated us strangers as honored guests, we thank them from our hearts.We'll not soon forget their kindness."

  "I'll tell them," the Captain promised. Stoltzfoos hoisted himself tothe wagon seat and reached a hand down to boost his wife up beside him.Martha Stoltzfoos sat, blushing a bit for having displayed an accidentalinch of black stocking before the ship's officers. She smoothed down herblack skirts and apron, patted the candle-snuffer _Kapp_ into place overher prayer-covering, and tucked the wool cape around her arms andshoulders. The world outside, her husband said, was a cold one.

  Now in the Stoltzfoos wagon was the final lot of homestead goods withwhich these two Amishers would battle the world of Murna. There was theplow and bags of seed, two crates of nervous chickens; a huge, roundtabletop; an alcohol-burning laboratory incubator, bottles ofagar-powder, and a pressure cooker that could can vegetables as readilyas it could autoclave culture-media. There was a microscope designed towork by lamplight, as the worldly vanity of electric light would illsuit an Old Order bacteriologist like Martha Stoltzfoos. Walled in byall this gear was another passenger due to debark on Murna, snufflingand grunting with impatience. "_Sei schtill_, Wutzchen," Stoltzfooscrooned. "You'll be in your home pen soon enough."

  The Captain raised his hand. The Engineer punched a button to tongue thelanding ramp out to Murnan earth. Cold air rammed in from the outsidewinter. The four horses stomped their hoofs on the floor-plates, theirbreath spikes of steam. Wutzchen squealed dismay as the chill hit hisnose.

  "We're _reddi far geh_, Captain," Stoltzfoos said. "My woman and Iinvite you and your men to feast at our table when you're back in theseparts, five years hence. We'll stuff you fat as sausages with onionsoup and Pannhaas, Knepp and Ebbelkuche, shoo-fly pie and _scharifer_cider, if the folk here grow apples fit for squeezing."

  "You'll have to set up planks outdoors to feed the lot I'll be bringing,Aaron," the Captain said. "Come five-years' springtime, when I bringyour Amish neighbors out, I'll not forget to have in my pockets a tootof candy for the little Stoltzes I'll expect to see underfoot." Martha,whose English was rusty, blushed none the less. Aaron grinned as heslapped the reins over the rumps of his team. "Giddap!" The cart rumbledacross the deck and down the ramp, onto the soil of Murna. Yonnie, theAyrshire bull, tossed his head and sat as the rope tightened on hisnoseband. He skidded stubbornly down the ramp till he felt cold earthagainst his rear. Accepting fate, Yonnie scrambled up and plodded afterthe wagon. As the Stoltzfooses and the last of their off-worldly goodstopped a hillock, they both turned to wave at the ship's officers. Then,veiled by the dusty fall of snow, they disappeared.

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  "I don't envy them," the Engineer said, staring out into the winteryworld.

  "Hymie, were you born in a barn?" the Exec bellowed.

  "Sorry, sir." The Engineer raised the landing ramp. Heaters hummed tothaw the hold's air. "I was thinking about how alone those two folks arenow."

  "Hardly alone," the Captain said. "There are four million Murnans,friendly people who consider a white skin no more than a personalidiosyncrasy. Aaron's what his folks call a _Chentelmaan_, too. He'llget along."

  "Chentelmaan-schmentelmaan," the Engineer said. "Why'd he come halfacross Creation to scratch out a living with a horse-drawn plow?"

  "He came out here for dirt," the Captain said. "Soil is more thanseed-bed to the Amish. It feeds the Old Order they're born to. Aaronand Martha Stoltzfoos would rather have built their barns beside theSusquehanna, but all the land there's taken. Aaron could have taken ajob in Lancaster, too; he could have shaved off his beard, bought aChevie and moved to the suburbs, and settled down to read anEnglish-language Bible in a steepled church. Instead, he signed ahomestead-contract for a hundred acres eighty light-years from home; andset out to plow the land like his grandpop did. He'll sweat hard for hispiece of Murna, but the Amish always pay well for their land."

  "And what do we, the government, I mean, get from the deal?" the Execwanted to know. "This wagon of ours doesn't run on hay, like Aaron'sdoes."

  "Cultures skid backwards when they're transplanted," the Captain said."Murnan culture was lifted from Kano, a modern city by the standards ofthe time; but, without tools and with a population too small to supporttechnology, the West African apostates from Islam who landed here fourhundred years ago slid back to the ways of their grandparents. We wantthem to get up to date again. We want Murna to become a market. That'sAaron's job. Our Amishman has got to start this planet back toward themachine age."

  "Seems an odd job to give a fellow who won't drive a car or read byelectric light," the Engineer observed.

  "Not so odd," the Captain said. "The Amish pretty much invented Americanagriculture, you know. They've developed the finest low-energy farmingthere is. Clover-growing, crop-rotation, using animal manures, those aretheir inventions. Aaron, by his example, will teach the natives herePennsylvania farming. Before you can say Tom Malthus, there'll be steelcities in this wilderness, filled with citizens eager to open chargeaccounts for low-gravs and stereo sets."

  "You expect our bearded friend to reap quite a harvest, Captain," theEngineer said. "I just hope the natives here let him plant the seed."

  "Did you get along with him, Hymie?"

  "Sure," the Engineer said. "Aaron even made our smiths, those humansharks bound for Qureysh, act friendly. For all his strange ways, he's anice guy."

  "Nice guy, hell," the Captain said. "He's a genius. Thatseventeenth-century un-scientist has more feeling for folkways in hiscalloused left hand than you'd find in all the Colonial Survey. How doyou suppose the Old Order maintains itself in Pennsylvania, a tinyDeitsch-speaking enclave surrounded by calico suburbs and ten-lanehighways? They mind their business and leave the neighbors to theirs.The Amish have never been missionaries--they learned in 1600 thatmissionaries are resented, and either slaughtered or absorbed."

  "Sometimes digestively," the Engineer remarked.

  "Since the Thirty Years' War, back when 'Hamlet' was opening in London,
these people have been breeding a man who can fit one special niche insociety. The failures were killed in the early days, or later went gayand took the trappings of the majority. The successes stayed on thefarm, respected and left alone. Aaron has flirted with our century; heand his wife learned some very un-Amish skills at the Homestead School.The skill that makes Aaron worth his fare out here, though, is an Amishskill, and the rarest one of all. He knows the Right Way to Live, andlives it; but he knows, too, that your Truth-of-the Universe issomething different. And right, for