Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  "Afuwo!" the Sarki yelled, a woman's call, grinning, crouched to spring aside. "Hah!" Aaron shouted, and tossed the ball to Waziri's older brother, Dauda. "Oh!" Dauda yelled, and threw the ball to the shoemaker. "Tay!" the cobbler exulted, and slammed the ball at the lower-ranking of the two men within the square, the village banker. The shoemaker missed, and was retired.

  The Daturans were soon stripped down to trousers and boots, their black torsos steaming in the cold air. Aaron removed his shirt--but not his hat--and so far forgot his Hausa in the excitement that he not only rooted for his teammates in Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch, but even punctuated several clumsy plays with raw Fadomm's.

  Aaron's skill won the first half for his team. Blooded, the Chamber of Commerce Eight fought through to win the second half. A tie. The play-off saw the Working-Man's League pummeled to a standstill by the C-of-C, who took the laurels with a final slam that knocked Waziri into the straw, protesting that it was an accident.

  Sweating, laughing, social status for the moment forgotten, the teams and their mobs of fans surged into the farmhouse to demand of Martha wedges of raisin pie and big cups of strong coffee. As the guests put their rigas and their white caps back on, and assumed therewith their game-discarded rank of class, they assured Aaron that the afternoon at the ball game had been a large success.

  * * * * *

  The next day was crisp and cold. With nothing more to be done till the soil thawed, Aaron took Waziri down to the creek to investigate his project of irrigating the hilltop acres. The flow of water was so feeble that the little stream was ice to its channel. "Do you have hereabouts a digger-of-waterholes?" Aaron asked the boy. Waziri nodded, and supplied the Hausa phrase for this skill. "Good. Wonn's Gottes wille iss, I will find a spot for them to dig, smelling out the water as can my cousin Blue Ball Benjamin Blank," Aaron said. "Go get from the barn the pliers, the hand-tool that pinches."

  Waziri trotted off and brought back the pliers. "What are you up to, Haruna-boss?" he asked. Aaron was holding the bulldog pliers out before him, one handle in each hand, parallel to the ground.

  "I am smelling for the well-place," the Amishman said, pacing deliberately across the field. The boy scampered along beside him. "We will need at least one well to be safe from August draught. Cousin Benjamin found the wet depths in this fashion; perhaps it will work for me." Aaron walked, arms outstretched, for half an hour before his face grew taut. He slowed his walking and began to work toward the center of a spiral. Waziri could see the sweat springing up on the young farmer's brow and fingers, despite the cold breeze that blew. The bulldog pliers trembled as though responding to the throbbing of an engine. Suddenly, as though about to be jerked from Aaron's hands, the pliers tugged downward so forceably that he had to lift his elbows and flex his wrists to hold onto them. "Put a little pile of stones here, Waziri," he said. "We'll have the diggers visit as soon as the ground thaws."

  Waziri shook his head. "Haruna, they will not touch soft earth until the first grass sprouts," he said.

  "Time enough," Aaron said. He looked up to satisfy himself that his prospective well-site was high enough to avoid drainage from his pig-yard, then left the Murnan boy to pile up a cairn for the diggers. It would be good to have a windmill within ear-shot of the house, he mused; its squeaking would ease Martha with a homey sound.

  Alone for a few minutes, Aaron retired to the workshop in the cellar of the barn. He planed and sanded boards of a native lumber very like to tulipwood. Into the headboard of the cradle he was making, he keyhole-sawed the same sort of broad Dutch heart that had marked his own cradle, and the cradles of all his family back to the days in the Rhineland, before they'd been driven to America.

  Martha Stoltzfoos was speaking Hausa better than she'd spoken English since grade-school days, and she kept busy in the little bacteriological laboratory on her sunporch, keeping fresh the skills she'd learned at Georgetown and might some day need in earnest; but she still grew homesick as her child-coming day drew nearer. It was wrong, she told Aaron, for an Amishwoman to have heathen midwives at her lying-in. For all their kindness, the Murnan women could never be as reassuring as the prayer-covered, black-aproned matrons who'd have attended Martha back home. "Ach, Stoltz," she told her husband, "if only a few other of unser sart Leit could have come here with us."

  "Don't worry, Love," Aaron said. "I've eased calves and colts enough into the world; man-children can't come so different."

  "You talk like a man," Martha accused him. "I wish my Mem was just down the road a piece, ready to come a-running when my time came," she said. She put one hand on her apron. "Chuudes Paste! The little rascal is wild as a colt, indeed. Feel him, Stoltz!"

  Aaron dutifully placed his hand to sense the child's quickening. "He'll be of help on the farm, so strong as he is," he remarked. Then, tugging his hat down tight, Aaron went outdoors, bashful before this mystery.

  The little creek had thawed, and the light of the sun on a man's face almost gave back the heat the air extorted. Waziri had gone to town today for some sort of Murnan spring-festival, eager to celebrate his hard-earned wealth on his first day off in months. The place seemed deserted, Aaron felt, without the boy; without the visitors he'd played ball and talked crops with, striding up in their scarlet-trimmed rigas to gossip with their friend Haruna.

  Between the roadway and the house, Aaron knelt to rake up with his fingers a handful of the new-thawed soil. He squeezed it. The clod in his hand broke apart of its own weight: it was not too wet to work. Festival-day though it was to his Schwotzer neighbors, he was eager to spear this virgin soil with his plow blade.

  Aaron strode back to the barn. He hitched Rosina--the dappled mare, named "Raisin" for her spots--to the plow and slapped her into motion. Sleek with her winter's idleness, Rosina was at first unenthusiastic about the plow; but the spring sun and honest exercise warmed her quickly. Within half an hour she was earning her keep. Though Aaron was plowing shallow, the compact soil broke hard. Rosina leaned into the traces, leaving hoofprints three inches deep. No gasoline tractor, Aaron mused, could ever pull itself through soil so rich and damp. Geilsgrefte, horsepower, was best exerted by a horse, he thought.

  The brown earth-smells were good. Aaron kicked apart the larger clods, fat with a planet-life of weather and rich decay. This land would take a good deal of disking to get it into shape. His neighbors, who'd done their heavy plowing just after last fall's first frost, were already well ahead of him. He stabled Rosina at sundown, and went in to sneak a well-earned glass of hard cider past Martha's teetotaling eye.

  * * * * *

  Musa the carpenter brought his son home well after dark. Waziri had had adventures, the old man said; dancing, gambling on the Fool's Wheel, sampling fonio-beer, celebrating his own young life's springtime with the earth's. Both the old man and the boy were barefoot, Aaron noticed; but said nothing: perhaps shoelessness was part of their spring-festival.

  Waziri a bit geschwepst with the beer, tottered off to bed. "Thanks to you, friend Haruna, that boy became a man today," the carpenter said. He accepted a glass of Aaron's cider. "Today Waziri's wallet jingled with bronze and copper earned by his own sweat, a manful sound to a lad of fifteen summers. I ask pardon for having returned your laborer in so damaged a condition, brother Haruna; but you may be consoled with the thought that the Mother's festival comes but once in the twelve-month."

  "No harm was done, brother Musa," Aaron said, offering his visitor tobacco. "In my own youth, I sometimes danced with beer-light feet to the music of worldly guitars; and yet I reached a man's estate."

  Offered a refill for his pipe, Musa raised a hand in polite refusal. "Tomorrow's sun will not wait on our conversation, and much must be done, in the manner of racers waiting the signal, before the first blade breaks the soil," he said. "Good night, brother Haruna; and may Mother grant you light!"

  "Mother keep you, brother Musa," Aaron murmured the heathen phrase without embarrassment. "I'll guide your feet to your wagon, if I may.
"

  Aaron, carrying the naphtha lantern, led the way across the strip of new-plowed soil. Set by frost into plastic mounds and ridges, the earth bent beneath his shoes and the carpenter's bare feet. Aaron swung Musa's picket-iron, the little anchor to which his horse was tethered, into the wagon, noticing that it had been curiously padded with layers of quilted cloth. "May you journey home in good health, brother Musa," he said.

  "Uwaka!" Musa shouted, staring at the plow-cuts.

  Aaron Stoltzfoos dropped the lantern to his side, amazed that the dignified old man could be guilty of such an obscenity. Perhaps he'd misheard. "Haruna, you have damned yourself!" Musa bellowed. "Cursed be this farm! Cursed be thy farming! May thy seedlings rot, may thy corn sprout worms for tassles, may your cattle stink and make early bones!"

  "Brother Musa!" Aaron said.

  "I am no sib to you, O Bearded One," Musa said. "Nor will I help you carry the curse you have brought upon yourself by today's ill-doing." He darted back to the farmhouse, where he ordered half-wakened Waziri to pad barefoot after him to the wagon, rubbing his eyes. "Come, son," Musa said. "We must flee these ill-omened fields." Without another word to his host, the carpenter hoisted his boy into the wagon, mounted, and set off into the night. The hoofs of his horse padded softly against the dirt road, unshod.

  Martha met the bewildered Aaron at the door, wakened by Musa's shouting. "Wass gibt, Stoltz?" she asked. "What for was all the carry-on?"

  Aaron tugged at his beard. "I don't know, woman," he admitted. "Musa the carpenter took one look at the plowing I did today, then cursed me as though he'd caught me spitting in his well. He got Waziri up from bed and took him home." He took his wife's hand. "I'm sorry he woke you up, Liebchen."

  "It was not so much the angry carpenter who waked me as the little jack rabbit you're father to," Martha said. "As you say, a Bun who can kick so hard, and barefoot, too, will be a strong one once he's born."

  Aaron was staring out the window onto the dark road. "Farwas hot Musa sell gehuh?" he asked himself. "What for did Musa do such a thing? He knows that our ways are different to his. If I did aught wrong, Musa must know it was done not for want to harm. I will go to the village tomorrow; Musa must forgive me and explain."

  "He will, Stoltz." Martha said. "Kuum, schloef. You'll be getting up early."

  "How can I sleep, not knowing how I have hurt my friend?" Aaron asked.

  "You must," Martha urged him. "Let your cares rest for the night, Aaron."

  In the morning, Stoltzfoos prepared for his trip into Datura by donning his Sunday-best. He clipped a black patent-leather bow tie, a wedding gift, onto his white shirt: and fastened up his best broadfall trousers with his dress suspenders. Over this, Aaron put his Mutzi, the tailed frock coat that fastened with hooks-and-eyes. When he'd exchanged his broad-brimmed black felt working-hat for another just the same, but unsweated, Aaron was dressed as he'd be on his way to a House-Amish Sunday meeting back home. "I expect no trouble here, Martha," he said, tucking a box of stogies under his arm as a little guest-gift for the old carpenter.

  "Hurry home, Stoltz; I feel wonderful busy about the middle," Martha said. There was a noise out on the road. "Listen!" she said. "Go look the window out, now; someone is coming the yard in!"

  Aaron hastened to lift the green roller-blind over the parlor window. "Ach; it is the groesie Fisch, Sarki Kazunzumi, with half the folk from town," he said. "Stay here, woman. I will out and talk with them."

  The Sarki sat astride his white pony, staring as Aaron approached him. Behind their chief, on lesser beasts, sat Kazunzumi's retainers, each with a bundle in his arms. "Welcome, O Sarki!" Aaron said, raising his fist.

  Kazunzumi did not return the Amishman's salute. "I return your gifts, Lightless One," he announced. "They are tainted with your blasphemy." He nodded, and his servants dismounted to stack at the side of the road Aaron's guest-gifts of months before. The bale of tobacco was set down, the bolt of scarlet silk, the chains of candy, the silver-filigreed saddle. "Now that I owe you naught, Bearded One, we have no further business with one another." He reined his horse around. "I go in sadness, Haruna," he said.

  "What did I do, Kazunzumi?" Aaron asked. "What am I to make of your displeasure?"

  "You have failed us, who was my friend," the Sarki said. "You will leave this place, taking your woman and your beasts and your sharp-shod horses."

  "Sir, where am I to go?"

  "Whence came you, Haruna?" the Sarki asked. "Return to your own black-garbed folk, and injure the Mother no longer with your lack of understanding."

  "Sarki Kazunzumi, I know not how I erred," Stoltzfoos said. "As for returning to my own country, that I cannot. The off-world vessel that brought us here is star-far away; and it will not return until we are all five summers older. My Martha is besides with child, and cannot safely travel. My land is ripe for seeding. How can I go now?"

  "There is wilderness to the south, where no son of the Mother lives," the Sarki said. "Go there. I care not for heathen who are out of my sight."

  "Sir, show us mercy," Aaron said.

  Kazunzumi danced his shoeless horse around to face Aaron. "Haruna, who was my friend, whom I thought to stand with me in Mother's light, I would be merciful; but I cannot be weak. It is not me whom you must beseech, but the Mother who feeds us all. Make amends to Her, then Sarki Kazunzumi will give his ear to your pleas. Without amends, Haruna, you must go from here within the week." Kazunzumi waved his arm and galloped off toward Datura. His servants followed quickly. On the roadside lay the gifts, dusted from the dirt raised by the horses.

  * * * * *

  The Amishman turned toward the house. Martha's face was at the parlor window, quizzical under her prayer-covering, impatient to hear what had happened. Aaron plodded back to the house with the evil news, stumbling over a clod of earth in the new-turned furrows near the road. Martha met him at the door. "Waas will er?" she demanded.

  "He says we must leave our farm."

  "Why for?" she asked.

  "Somehow, I have offended their fadommt Mum-god," Aaron said. "The Sarki has granted us a week to make ready to go into the wilderness." He sat on a coffee-colored kitchen chair, his head bowed and his big hands limp between his knees.

  "Stoltz, where can we go?" Martha asked. "We have no Freindschaft, no kin, in all this place."

  Aaron tightened his hands into fists. "We will not go!" he vowed. "I will find a way for us to stay." He broke open the box of cigars that had been meant as a gift for Musa and clamped one of the black stogies between his teeth. "What is their heidisch secret?" he demanded. "What does the Mother want of me?"

  "Aaron Stoltz," Martha said vigorously, "I'll have no man of mine offering dignity to a heathen god. The Schrift orders us to cut down the groves of the alien gods, to smash their false images; not to bow before them. Will you make a golden calf here, as did your namesake Aaron of Egypt, for whose sin the Children of Israel were plagued?"

  "Woman, I'll not have you preach to me like a servant of the Book," Aaron said. "It is not for you to cite Scripture." He stared through the window. "What does the Mother want of me?"

  "As you shout, do not forget that I am a mother, too," Martha said. She dabbed a finger at her eye.

  "Fagep mir, Liebling," Aaron said. He walked behind the chair where his wife sat. Tenderly, he kneaded the muscles at the back of her neck. "I am trying to get inside Musa's head, and Kazunzumi's; I am trying to see their world through their eyes. It is not an easy thing to do, Martha. Though I lived for a spell among the 'English,' my head is still House-Amish; a fat, Dutch cheese."

  "It is a good head," Martha said, relaxing under his massage, "and if there be cheese-heads hereabouts, it's these blackfolk that wear them, and not my man."

  "If I knew what the die-hinker our neighbors mean by their Mother-talk, it might be I could see myself through Murnan eyes, as I can hear a bit with Hausa ears," Aaron said. "Iss sell nix so, Martha?"

  "We should have stood at home, and thou
ght with our own good heads," she said.

  "Let me think," Aaron said. "If I were to strike you, wife," he mused, "it could do you great hurt, and harm our unborn child, Nee?"

  "Aaron!" Martha scooted out from under her husbands kneading hands.

  "Druuvel dich net!" he said. "I am only thinking. These blackfolk now, these neighbors who were before last night our friends, speak of Light as our bishop at home speaks of Grace. To have it is to have all, to be one with the congregation. If I can find this Light, we and the Sarki and his people can again be friends." Aaron sat down. "I must learn what I have done wrong," he said.

  * * * * *

  "Other than drink a glass of cider now and then, and make worldly music with a guitar, you've done no wrong," Martha said stubbornly. "You're a good man."

  "In the Old Order, I am a good man, so long as no Diener makes trouble over a bit of singing or cider," Aaron said. "As a guest on Murna, I have done some deed that has hurt this Mother-god, whom our neighbors hold dear."

  "Heathenish superstition!"

  "Martha, love, I am older than you, and a man," Aaron said. "Give me room to think! If the goddess-Mother is heathen as Baal, it matters not; these folk who worship her hold our future in their hands. Besides, we owe them the courtesy not to dance in their churches nor to laugh at their prayers; even the 'English' have more grace than that." Aaron pondered. "Something in the springtime is the Murnan Mother's gift, her greatest gift. What?"

  "Blaspheme not," Martha said. "Remember Him who causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth."

  "Wife, is the True God less, if these people call Him Mother?" Aaron demanded.