by John Brunner
But where was everybody?
Goading Flapper into the bay that covered the site of Prefs, Tenthag surveyed the vicinity with his telescope. Normally by dawn the fisherfolk would be launching gorborangs, and sand-collectors loading raw material for the glass-furnace. Because it had been so long since he left here, he had been prepared for some changes, but not for this feeling of vacancy which set his weather-sense to full alert.
Leaving the porp to browse, he waded ashore carrying the last of his copies of Gveest's food-data. As soon as he was clear of the water, he shouted with all the force of his mantle.
There was no answer.
Becoming more and more alarmed, he padded along familiar tracks— how often had he come this way with Fifthorch, to swim from the gentle beach and sometimes dive for relics?—noting with dismay how well-tended clusters of food-plants had been let run wild. He came across sleds of the kind used to bring home sand, abandoned by the path; creepers were twining over them in a way that indicated they must have been dumped a moonlong ago, at least. And his forebear's mirror, source of Neesos's prosperity, was pointing at nowhere.
Shortly, breasting a rise, he came in sight of the little town at the center of the island, sheltered in a hollow against the worst of winter weather. Here at last were people, though nothing like as many as he would have expected. Draped on slanting branches, or lying under rocky overhangs for protection against the morning sunlight, they were listening to someone talking in a loud rough voice. Before he drew close enough to make out what was being said, Tenthag had already discerned that they were surrounded by all the goods they could assemble, be it foodstuffs or glassware or seed-stock or objects salvaged from Prefs.
Something prompted him to great caution. Lowering to minimum bearable height, he stole among shadows cast by bushes until he reached a rocky niche where he could look on unobserved. Fortunately the wind prevented anyone from scenting him ... but the stink it bore to him from the crowd was enough to make him quail. It uttered a whole history of greed and jealousy, and the speaker at the middle of the group was fomenting it.
And the orator was—
Recognizing him, Tenthag was almost snatched by dreamness. It was Fifthorch.
Who was saying, "—so of course they want to keep the secret for themselves! It's lucky for us that the People of the Sea aren't under the pads of the Bowockers and their precious Order of the Jingfired! Jing was never real! Jing was a figment to keep young'uns quiet! Well, some of us grew out of childhood tales! I wish we all had! The fact that supposedly adult people right here on Neesos still claimed that the Jingtexts must be truth—until we drove them out as they deserved!—isn't that enough to curdle your maw? It certainly did mine! Be thankful for the People of the Sea, who are coming to our rescue! I'm sure we've brought together enough goods to make them give us the secret of fertility! They care about the fact that we've been left without a single new bud since traitor Tenthag ran away! They aren't cold and cynical and cruel like the Bowockers, who weren't content to take our most valuable possessions from beneath the Bay of Prefs, but stole our youngest young'un as well! And what did they leave in exchange? Rubbish! Scraps and oddments any one of us could have got by making a voyage to the mainland! Things you trade for common seed or common glass! Not glass like ours, the finest on the planet! Did they offer musculators and nervograps? Did they give us anything useful? No, they robbed us of what we didn't even realize we owned, and laughed when they went away! Taking our last new-budded youngling with them, what is worse!"
His memory echoing with Nemora's comment about the archeologists who were far too mercenary for her liking, Tenthag found that more than he could endure. Rising to normal height, he padded forward, shouting, and all eyes turned on him with amazement ... save for Fifthorch's, which was full of hate.
"I never dreamed you'd miss me so much, Fifthorch!" he roared. "Did it not suit you to become the youngest when I left—not stolen, but of my own free will?"
His diet of yelg, in spite of his lonely and inactive life aboard a porp, kept him fit and well pressurized; he was able to overtop Fifthorch without effort. Taking station higher on the branchway, where he could continue to dominate the other, he filled his mantle with air for the loudest possible shout. These people looked as though they needed to be startled back to reality.
But a shrill voice took the pressure out of him with a single question.
"Are you one of the People of the Sea, who are going to show us how to breed again?"
He turned, seeking the source of the inquiry ... and was instantly deflated.
"Ninthag!" he blurted, scarcely recognizing the old, bloated, half-blind shape that clung to a slanting bough befouled with tatters of wild orqid— colorful, but unfit for food. "Ninthag, don't you know your own sole bud?"
"Are you pretending to be Tenthag?" the old man wheezed. "I'm not such a fool as to believe you! He went away, long, long ago, stolen by the Bowockers! I see him in visions now, and he's laughing at us—laughing at the poor folk he left behind while he rejoices in the best the world can offer! We stay here, wondering when if ever another bud will come among us, and—Keep away from me!"
Tenthag was scrambling towards him, but on the instant half a score of others rose to block his way. Their exudates took on the taint of combat-stink.
Slowly Tenthag retreated, recognizing what he had encountered at Klong and sundry places since. These folk were starved into dreamness ... of their own volition.
He said, "Aren't you ashamed to deny your own? Fifthorch knows me—why don't the rest of you?"
"We know what we want to know," said one of them, and there was a rumble of agreement.
"But you can't! You're underfed, you're going crazy! Yet there's food all around you!" Tenthag clenched his claws in impotent rage.
"We have to keep everything we can spare to trade with the People of the Sea," said Ninthag obstinately. "Who knows how much they'll demand for the secret of fertility? We must be sure that there's enough."
"But here I am, who was at Ognorit where the secret was discovered, and I bring data due to Gveest himself—free of charge!"
With that shouted boast Tenthag broke through their apathy. They reared back and gazed at him with pitiable eagerness. Even Fifthorch was taken off guard, and gapped his mandibles.
"Is it truly you?" whispered Ninthag, staring wearily. "Your voice, your scent ... But it has been so long!" He summoned a last trace of his old authority. "Show what you've brought, then! Not to me, for my sight has failed. Where's Thirdusk?"
"He betrayed us!" shouted Fifthorch. "He fled with the cowards who were prepared to let Neesos die!"
That statement made everything clear to Tenthag. He could picture how it must have been: one faction, the more rational, counseling that life go on as normal, with enough food eaten and enough new crops planted for the next year; the other so obsessed with the lack of new buds as to forget the need to provide for them if they happened, ultimately seizing the goods of their rivals and driving them away. It was much like what had happened at his other ports of call. But in his pith he had hoped that his own homeland might be a little different, a little better...
He'd been wrong. He knew that even as he proffered the documents he had brought, and a half-score of greedy eyes fixed on them as Fifthorch spread them out.
"There's nothing here to touch the folk!" the latter yelled. "It's all to do with plants and animals!"
"But if there's not enough food—"
"We manage well with half the food we used to gobble! We must save the rest to pay the People of the Sea! You're a coward like Thirdusk! You're a traitor!"
All at once they were pelting him with insults and trampling his precious message underpad. He could do nothing but turn and flee, or they would have torn him torso from mantle in their fury.
Luckily—luckily!—they were too weak to overtake him on his way to the bay where he had left Flapper. By the time he stumbled into the shallows, he also was weak
ened by his efforts, and his perception was diminished. Had it not been, he would have reacted to what was happening on the skyline before he remounted his porp and turned her seaward.
Only then, though, and much too late, did he realize what was looming towards Neesos.
Here came the visitors the relic of the folk were waiting for: five junqs, four briqs, with bright banners on poles to tell the world—
WE HAVE THE SECRET OF FERTILITY! AND IT'S FOR SALE!
He crumpled on Flapper's saddle, utterly dispirited, and offered no resistance when they detached him from his travel-harness, dragged him aboard the commander's briq, and lashed Flapper to her side with yells of triumph.
He was too busy mourning for a world that never was.
IX
The commander of this raggle-taggle fleet still wore ancient symbols of rank on thongs crossed about his body: a spyglass lacking its objective, a briq-goad worn to a stump. Crusty-mantled from bad food and long exposure to the elements, he interrogated Tenthag about Neesos, wanting to know whether any folk were left, or whether they had all fled as from so many other lonely islands.
"They might as well have run away," was Tenthag's bitter answer. "They took leave of their senses long ago. But why ask me? I'm just a visitor, and there they are who can answer for themselves!"
He pointed. Those who had rushed in pursuit of him were milling about on the beach, amazed at the sight of the fleet, and he could almost hear the arguments over who must return to town and collect trade-goods.
"Hah!" said the commander with satisfaction. "Let's go see what they can offer worth the taking! You!"—handing a prong to a nervous she'un—"keep watch over him, hear me?"
And, surrounded by his sub-commanders, headed landward.
More miserable than ever, Tenthag was compelled to look on as the Neesans delivered everything they owned for the visitors' inspection. Meantime, however, a suspicion began to gnaw at the back of his mind. At first he was too despondent to react; by degrees it overcame his depression, and he roused himself enough to survey the close-clustered briqs and junqs.
They still bore their complement of old'uns and she'uns. But not a single one among the latter was in bud...
The monstrosity of the deceit these nomads were perpetrating stabbed him to the pith, and he almost made a leap for Flapper. But the she-guard was ready to spike him, and he was in no hurry to become an underwater banquet.
He must match their deception without giving off a betraying odor, therefore. Would anger-stink cover up a lie?
Well, by now experience had made him cynical enough to try...
He and the guard were isolated near the briq's after end; the rest of her riders were gathered forward. He said softly, "What's your commander's name?"
She hesitated; then, finding no reason to refuse the information, muttered, "He's called Sprapter."
"And he is a good person to serve under?"
"He does well by us. He's clever. The proof's around you." Her tone was curt, but uneasy, as though she feared a trap.
Tenthag saw nothing special about the accoutrements of the briqs and junqs—indeed, they could have been matched by any kyq from his youth, and the latter would have been set about with useful gorborangs, as well—but now was no time to be patronizing. He said hastily, "And you are ...?"
"Veetalya."
"Do you believe it to be part of Sprapter's plan that I must parch to death?"
Taken aback, she said, "You heard his order to me!"
"So I did. It made no mention of my being denied water. Oh, I know the People of the Sea hate us couriers nowadays, but our lives have much in common, and I take it that if Sprapter ordered you to guard me he'll expect to find me fit and well when he returns,"
Alongside the briq Flapper was growing restive, as always in salt water. Why had they not turned her loose, or stripped and killed her? Did Sprapter cherish grandiose dreams of adding a porp to his little fleet? Or did he think she might prove useful for trade purposes when they headed south in search of the secret they claimed to possess, but did not? Whatever the reason, it was a stroke of luck. Tenthag said in his most wheedling tones, "Your drink-bladders are bulging, aren't they? And if there's one thing a porp lacks, it's adequate drink. A briq is far superior in that regard. You People of the Sea know ancient tricks that we ought really to have studied, but of course, as you know, we tend to be arrogant. With a few exceptions, like myself for example. But isn't that a fault you too display?"
She was nervously tightening her grip on the prong. With a reflex glance at the drink-bladders, she said, "I don't know what you mean!"
"Oh, it's plain as sunlight! You're not in bud, although your folk possess the secret of fertility, and I can only explain the fact by assuming that you angered Sprapter, and he refused to let you have a bud until you'd made amends for some offense you'd given. Well, if you give me drink, I'll speak up on your behalf when he returns."
By this time, as he had dared to hope, she was thoroughly confused. Providentially, a shout rose from the beach at the same moment. The distance was too great for Tenthag to make out exactly what was being said, but a fair guess suggested that one of the Neesans had complained about all their best possessions being taken, and one of the visitors had demanded what price was too high to pay for fertility.
The same might be asked concerning freedom. Accustomed, like almost everybody else, to imagining that the risk of being stabbed through a major tubule was sufficient to make anyone sit quiet, Sprapter had relied on Veetalya's possession of a good sharp prong a padlong distant to ensure his captive would obey her. But he had seen Pletrow calmly cut her own body with a far keener blade, and heard her casual dismissal of the risk...
"Oh, come now!" he said, as Veetalya glanced towards the row on shore, and took a stride that brought him within the range of her prong. "A drink is not too much to—"
And snap. At maximum pressure his claws closed on the prong and broke it off, and he was all over her, trusting to his greater weight to force her backward. She wasted her spare pressure on a scream, and that sufficed. He trampled on her as though she were not there and swarmed over the briq's side into Flapper's saddle, which the People of the Sea had not found time to dismount. With claws and mandibles and the stub of the prong he slashed at the bonds restraining her, and before the startled crewfolk at the forward end could get to him, he had weakened them enough for the porp to break the rest with one great heave and surge. Half-swamped in a deluge of water, he clung valiantly and jabbed her back with the prong in lieu of a goad. With all her well-fed force she rushed for open water, leaving his captors to fret and curse and hurl obscenities.
The breeze bore him one furious shout: "Well, a courier's no loss to us, any more than a porp!"
Wrong, promised Tenthag silently. I'm going to cost you more than you can possibly afford!
After so long a period of forced inaction, Flapper rushed straight for the horizon, and he let her go, glad that his provisions had not been pilfered. He drank a lot and ate a little, restoring his normality while calculating how long it would be before the trading on the beach came to an end. If tradition were anything to go by, it would last until dark, and some kind of celebration would follow. The People of the Sea would not dare risk departure without the regular formalities, or even in their debilitated state the Neesans might suspect the trick that had been played on them. Therefore he should have time to swing around on a long circular course and bring Flapper back to the island just after darkfall, when her return was least likely to be noticed.
Cold anger colored his mind gray. Stark facts like distant mountains marked the boundary of his thinking. He was possessed, for the first time in his life, by lust for vengeance.
As darkness fell, he sought the star which had caught his attention at the fringe of the Major Cluster. There was no mistake. It had turned yellower and brighter. Perhaps someone who had not watched the sky from the lonely vantage of a porp's back in mid-ocean might have overl
ooked the change, but to Tenthag it was past a doubt.
In ancient times they'd said the stars reflected what went on below. He was too well informed to swallow such deceits. But the image, nonetheless, was powerful, and struck chords in that level of his mind where dreamness ruled.
Perhaps that star was shedding bright new light on what had been dead planets, conjuring the force of life from them. It didn't matter. For him it was a symbol, and a challenge. He must cast light of his own on his own folk...
Luminants faintly outlined the island, but there were wide gaps where they had not been properly tended and he was able to steal ashore without being spotted. He left Flapper to fend for herself. If he came back by dawn, she would probably still be here; if not, she would shed her saddle as soon as it rotted, but with luck keep the secondary plants Gveest had bestowed on her, which would be an example to any other of the folk who ran across her later on. Maybe, if she bred in the wild, some of them might cross-take on her bud...
Who, though, would help the porps if the Guild of Couriers all met the same doom as Tenthag? In a few years, following the population explosion, they would surely be hunted down for food!
Repressing all such horrible previsions, he crept over the hill-crest on which stood the derelict solar mirror, and found his guesses accurate. Reluctant to leave before sharing refreshment with the local people, the visitors were sitting under arbors of luminants and pretending to be polite. Fifthorch, recognizable by scent and voice, was lavishing on them what food and liquor remained, while others waited in shadow, exuding the stink of greed ... or was it from the outsiders? At this distance he could not be certain.
But that was irrelevant. Hastening down the old familiar path, he headed for the crowd—and was brought up short, so that he clutched his sole weapon, the broken prong, and spun around with a hiss of terror. He had abruptly caught a waft of death, and there were overtones to it that he recognized.
Beside the path, clearly having collapsed as he moved away from the town, leaking his stale ichor on the ground after a major rupture of a lower tubule ... Ninthag.
