Monument (novel)

3

From Fornri’s earliest memories the Langri had terrified him.

Few children possessed living great-great-grandfathers, and those who did had to care for doddering, decrepit oldsters who thought only of the fire of death.

The Langri was—the Langri. His was the rope spear in the koluf hunt, and his stroke never missed. He it was who launched the boat into one of the world’s rare storms to rescue the children caught out in it. When all feared to cross a swollen stream, it was the Langri who found a ford and went first to test it. Those who had broken arms or legs were brought to him, for only the Langri had the skill to deal with such tragedies.

All manner of adults came to ask his counsel, from a woman whose marriage was troubled to the village leaders and even the Elder; and when the Langri said, “Do this,” entire villages leaped to his bidding. Where the Langri led, everyone followed.

Such a great-great-grandfather was a frightful burden for a small boy. The Langri would say, “Why do you go upstream to cross the river? Why don’t you swim it here, like the older boys?” Or “The older boys dive from the cliff. Why do you walk down?” Fornri was terrified, but he swam, and he dived.

And when the Langri said, “Spearing marnl is child’s play. You should be hunting koluf,” Fornri joined the hunters—the youngest person by far in his boat, perhaps the youngest who had ever joined a koluf hunt. The others did not know until afterward that the Langri had sent him, but the custom was for an empty place to be filled by anyone who wanted it, so they did not turn him away. Instead, they mocked him. “Look at the mighty hunter who honors us! Surely our boat is destined for greatness on this day! His will be the rope spear—if he can stop trembling long enough to throw it!”

But Fornri’s trembling was from rage, not fear—rage at the Langri, for sending him, and at the hunters, for their mocking. He flung the rope spear with such fury that he fell overboard. The jeers stopped abruptly as the spear struck solidly in the best place of all, the notch just back of the head; and because Fornri was already in the water, he took the trailing rope and made the first loop about the koluf’s knife-like, threshing tail, and the others thought he had gone into the water purposely. No one ever mocked Fornri again, about anything.

As the Langri grew older, still first in anything he felt like doing, more and more frequently he felt like doing nothing at all except lie in his hammock in his favorite grove on the point and sip the drink of intoxication. This brought new responsibilities for Fornri. Whatever the Langri did not care to do, he sent Fornri to do for him. And when Fornri came to his Time of Joy, when his peers could devote whole days and nights to music and dancing, to song, to the tender turmoil of love and courtship, Fornri was merely the personal servant of a tyrannical old man. Other boys envied him, the great-great-grandson and support of the Langri’s declining years, and Fornri could not understand why.

Then the Langri’s health began to fail. The Elder wisely concluded that Fornri’s talents were more suitable to hunting than nursing, and he sent Dalla to the Langri. Her mother, a widow, had died of the Hot Sickness that sometimes followed the smallest cut or scratch and was invariably fatal, and Dalla and a young sister were left without relatives.

Fornri had never had a sweetheart. He could have had his choice of many—not only was he a young man of fire, but he was the Langri’s heir, already famed for his bravery and his many skills, and there was no village that did not have maidens pining for the great-great-grandson of the Langri.

But the Langri, lounging in his hammock, demanding that his gourd be refilled, or that the leader of the next village be reminded that it was his turn to conduct the berry harvest, or that Fornri carry the Langri’s acceptance to a feasting invitation—the Langri seemed unaware that Fornri had reached the Time of Joy. One of the most sublime of joys was young love and courtship, for which long-established customs required freedom and leisure and which could not be managed at all between errands run for a demanding and temperamental old man. The loveliest of maidens might sigh when Fornri passed her, but a youth entrusted with an urgent message from the Langri, with instructions to hurry back with the reply, had no time to suggest an assignation, or even the sharing of a song, and anyway no respectable maiden would have accepted the degradation of a hasty courtship.

Then Dalla came. No maiden surpassed her in loveliness, and they could conduct their courtship with proper leisure despite the Langri’s demands because their very bondage brought them together constantly.

Because the Langri was sometimes seriously ill and racked with frightful stomach pains, it was decided that he needed more mature care. The adults took charge of him in spite of his objections, and they sympathetically gave Fornri and Dalla as much freedom as possible and found a younger boy to run the Langri’s infrequent errands.

At last Fornri and Dalla had the full pleasure of their Times of Joy. They sang and danced with the other youths, and they passed both days and nights of sweetness on the Bower Hills, the hills reserved for courtship. Most who had Fornri’s years were already betrothed. Because Dalla had not yet reached the age of betrothal, he was forced to wait; but in his belated pleasure of his Time of Joy he did not mind.

Yet even the sweetness was bitter-flavored when Fornri reflected that he possessed it only because the Langri suffered a serious illness and was growing old. He understood, now, that even though his great-great-grandfather possessed years far beyond those attained by ordinary men, he could not live always.

And he knew, too, that he loved him.

Then came the journey to the Elder, followed by the building of the Forest Village. Many joys suffered long interruptions because of the Langri’s school, and those of Fornri and Dalla most of all. Fornri again had the Langri’s errands to run, and both had to care for a sick old man who was trying to do more than his strength would allow. Even when the Langri’s illness confined him to his hammock they could not escape, for then they had to trek wearily from village to village trying vainly to persuade former students to return to class.

Rarely did they find time for the pleasures of the Bower Hills, and when they did, Fornri’s conscience troubled him severely. He could not understand the need for a Plan, or what the Plan would accomplish, but when the Langri said there would be no hunting, Fornri, at least, believed him. And if his world and his people were threatened, he knew he must put the Time of Joy behind him and do something about it. He only wished he could understand what it was he had to do.

With the class reduced to a mere two hands of students, the Langri finally began to teach them the Plan. All found it bewildering, and some flatly refused to believe it. If—as the Langri said—the skies were filled with worlds, why should anyone want theirs? It was known that the Langri was extremely old, and sometimes the minds of the aged imagined strange things. No one would willingly disrespect the Langri, but what he spoke was not believable.

Fornri would protest hotly, but even those who wanted to believe could make little sense of what the Langri told them. If this happens, he would say, that must be done. If the other thing happens, then something else must be done. If both happen… Banu sat with eyes closed and a dazed look on his face, but whenever the Langri asked him he could repeat what was said, word for word.

There would be a ship-from-the-sky, the Langri told them, and they might as well start calling such things spaceships, because that’s what they were. Compared with other ships, this one would be small. And then—

But the Plan seemed interminable, and when it was finished the Langri started over again. And over again. And over again.

Each day he grew weaker, and his pains became more racking. When he no longer could leave his hammock, he gathered them about him and once more started at the beginning. There would be a spaceship, a small spaceship, and then—

And then the day came when his words grew incoherent, and finally he could no longer speak. The class wandered off; Fornri and Dalla remained with the women who came to see what could be done to ease his pain.

“His face is dreadfully hot,” Dalla said. “Shouldn’t we call the healers?”

“They would only anger him,” Fornri told her. “The last time, he chased them away. He said there is no way to heal a body worn out by age, and I fear that he is right.”

The women massaged the Langri’s swollen limbs and applied damp leaves to his hot face. Fornri, watching with helpless concern, became aware of a faint, whistling sound. He puzzled over it for a moment and then set off at a lope toward the nearest village. He saw Dalla start after him, and he motioned her to go back. He broke into a run when he noticed that the sound became steadily louder.

At the edge of the forest he stopped abruptly. The sound had grown to an earsplitting shriek, and the villagers, all of them, were in panicky flight. They raced past him, panting with terror, and beyond the village he saw a spaceship slowly settling groundward. He recognized it at once—it was just as the Langri had described it.

“Stop!” he called to the villagers. “The Langri was right! We must use his Plan!”

They paid him no heed. The ship had vanished behind a hill, so he advanced cautiously to the hilltop and scurried from bush to bush until he found a hiding place from which he could observe this strange object.

It had come ponderously to rest in a seaside meadow, and after an interminable wait the hatch folded out and a man swung to the ground by his hands. The strange costume that covered him from ears to toenails was exactly what the Langri had foretold. Fornri made himself comfortable in his hiding place and watched delightedly.

Once on the ground, the man stretched his limbs luxuriously and then ran a finger down his chest, opening up his garment. Another man appeared in the airlock and shouted down to him, “Get back in here! They haven’t finished checking the atmosphere.”

The man on the ground took an enormously deep breath and exhaled slowly. “The atmosphere’s fine,” he shouted back. “I just checked it myself.”

Finally the walkway dropped from the opened hatch, and the ship’s company began to descend. The Langri had said there would be both men and women, but because of the strange costumes they wore, Fornri had difficulty in distinguishing them.

He picked out the leader at once: a short, fat man to whom others came for instructions. As the leader surveyed the scene about him, to Fornri’s gaping astonishment he blew a cloud of red smoke from his mouth.

“It is a pretty place,” he said.

“Pretty?” one of the others exclaimed. “It’s a paradise. Look at that beach!”

A slender man with bushy hair on his face came down the ramp and began to talk with the leader. They walked back and forth together with so much arm movement that Fornri wondered if this was part of their language.

The sea breeze carried their spoken words to him clearly. Bushy-face said, “We can’t leave without investigating those natives. Crystals only make you rich. Something like this would make you famous. Primitive humans! How could they have got to this out-of-the-way corner of the galaxy? I must have a look at that village!”

“Have a look, then,” the leader said. “Since I’m chartered as a scientific expedition, it wouldn’t hurt to have a few scientific results just in case someone asks what we’ve been doing. You can have an hour.”

The leader turned to another man, who was performing mysterious rites with a strange black object that he held in his two hands. “I wish you wouldn’t wear that gold tooth when I’m taking readings,” the man said. “For a moment I thought I had a gold strike.”

“No metals at all?” the leader asked.

The other shrugged. “Oh well—those natives may use copper spear points, but no one will ever run a mining concession on this world.”

“How come you picked up retron interference?”

“I told you there couldn’t possibly be retron crystals on this type of planet unless someone brought them here. I did pick up the interference. Maybe it’s still there and the terrain is masking it. Or maybe the meters burped when they shouldn’t have.”

The leader turned away disgustedly. “Another landing shot on nothing. For your information, setting this crate down and taking off again costs money.” He raised his voice. “Captain?”

A man in a different type of clothing appeared in the airlock. “Yes, Mr. Wembling?”

“We’ll lift in an hour. Break out the stun guns. Those wanting to stretch their legs are to stay in groups, and they’re not to get out of hailing distance of the ship. I want one stun gun with every group, and that’s an order. I also want an armed sentry here at the ship.” He turned to the others, most of whom were looking longingly at the sea. “And no swimming. An unknown world can be damned dangerous. You’ve seen the list of precautions. Follow it.”

The captain waved a hand and ducked back into the ship. The leader spoke to the man with the black object. “Take a group and scout around with that hand detector—just in case the retron interference was real.”

Groups began to form and head off in different directions. The bushy-faced man led one toward the village. It passed quite near to Fornri, who studied its members carefully and puzzled over the strangely shaped weapon one of them carried. The Langri had described such things, but none of his students believed what he told them.

Twenty strides toward the village, one of the group turned aside suddenly, leaped into a clump of bushes, and dragged out— Dalla, kicking and screaming. Fornri leaped to his feet in consternation and then quickly dropped out of sight. He had not known Dalla had followed him, and it was a contingency the Langri’s Plan did not provide for, but Fornri did not hesitate. While Dalla continued to struggle and occupied the men’s full attention, he moved stealthily toward them.

The man who captured her was laughing. “I like this world better and better. I hope there’s enough of these to go around.”

“Let’s take her to the ship,” Bushy-face said. “I want to see what sort of language she speaks.”

The other answered, “That isn’t what I want to see.”

Fornri was near enough to charge. He crashed into the man holding Dalla and knocked him sprawling. The others immediately grappled with Fornri, and all of them tumbled into a heap while Dalla quickly vanished into the forest. Three of the men pulled Fornri to his feet and held him, and another restrained Dalla’s captor, who was furiously angry and attempting to assault Fornri.

“Never mind,” Bushy-face said. “He’ll do as well as the woman.”

“Not for me, he won’t!”

“Let’s take him to the ship,” Bushy-face said. “We can look at the village later.”

As they approached the ship, the leader came to meet them. “What do you want with a native?” he asked disgustedly.

“I want to find out something about him,” the bushy-faced man said. “His features are Abdolynian, and I think I have some language keys.”

“With all the interesting things crawling in that ocean, you shouldn’t be wasting your time on humans. There are life forms there I don’t believe even when I’m looking at them. I didn’t need to worry about anyone sneaking a swim.” He turned to a man who was quietly following him about. “Hirus, what are the chances those freaks might be worth money?”

“The only ones interested would be museums and animalariums,” the other said. “They haven’t got money. If you donated a few of them, no doubt they’d be pleased to name a choice specimen after you. That thing with all the legs and the long neck— how’d you like to have it called genus Wemblous?”

The fat man shuddered.

Bushy-face had darted up the walkway to the ship while the others held onto Fornri. Now he returned with another sort of strange black object. He held it in front of Fornri, pressed some of the gleaming protuberances—and the thing spoke! It said, “Fraugh, villick, lascrouf, boumarl, caciss, denlibdra.”

Bushy-face was watching Fornri intently. “Those are key words,” he said. “If he’s Abdolynian, he ought to be able to understand at least one of them.”

Fornri, comprehending that he’d been expected to make meaning of the strange sounds, suppressed a smile.

One of the men exclaimed, “Look at the puggard! He’s laughing at you! He understands Galactic!”

Suddenly Fornri bolted, slipping from their grasps, knocking over the sentry who was pacing an aimless circle about the ship, and getting away cleanly. He outdistanced the pursuit and reached the forest safely. Dalla had been watching. She was waiting for him just inside the forest, and the two of them quickly placed its comfortably thick vegetation between themselves and the strangers’ weapons. They hurried toward the Forest Village.

There a crowd of terrified adults clustered about the Langri’s hammock. Women and men were wailing in turn, “Langri, a thing-from-the-sky! What shall we do?”

The Langri lay deathly still, but as Fornri and Dalla pushed through to him, his eyes opened and he muttered, “Too late.”

“The Langri won’t help us,” a woman said reproachfully.

“The Langri is very sick,” Dalla said. “You shouldn’t bother him.”

The Langri muttered again, “Go away. I’m dying.”

“He won’t tell us what to do,” the woman said.

“He’s already told us what to do,” Fornri said. “He taught us his Plan. Now we’ll follow it,” He spoke quietly to the man beside him. “Sound the signal gourds. Summon all the villages.” The man stared at Fornri for a moment. Then he smiled, nodded, and hurried away.

“We must capture the skymen,” Fornri told the others. “We have to do it without spears or knives, because we dare not injure them. The Langri said that is very important. Even if they injure or kill us, we must capture them without harming them. Do you understand?”

“How?” a man demanded.

Fornri smiled. “The Langri has told us how.”

The panic was lifting slowly. This descent of a thing-from-the-sky was the most terrifying event of their lifetimes, but if someone would tell them what to do, they would go and do it. Fornri divided them into two groups and sent them east and west to meet those coming from the other villages.

After he got them started, he turned again to the Langri. The staring eyes did not recognize him. “Should have taught the children,” the Langri muttered. “Children were interested. Older ones in a hurry to grow up. Should have started sooner and taught the children.” His body went rigid. “Hide the crystals!” he gasped.

Fornri clasped the Langri’s hand. Then his eyes sought Dalla’s. “Come,” he said.

They turned away. Only a few women, the Langri’s nurses, remained with him. Already a signal gourd was sending out patterns of deep honks, and the gourds of nearby villages were answering.

They had not reached the first bend in the forest path when they heard, behind them, the women’s voices raised in the lament of death. They did not look back. The most important thing in the Langri’s life had been his Plan; he surely would understand if they also made it the most important thing in his death.

The Langri had told them how, and they did exactly as he said. One group of skymen had blundered into the forest after Fornri. They advanced boldly, with one of their strange weapons in the lead, until one of them stepped off the path to pick fruit and ran a Death Thorn into his leg. The others argued as to whether the thorn should be left in his leg or pulled out at once with the chance of breaking it, because it was barbed, and he died before they could decide.

While they argued, Fornri surrounded them with the first villagers to arrive. The skymen started a panicky retreat, carrying the body with them, and Fornri sprang his ambush on a curve of the path. He captured them one at a time, without injury to anyone—just as the Langri had foretold.

A short time later, villagers from the west dropped from trees onto the party of skymen worshiping the mysterious black object. One skyman suffered an injured ankle and had to be carried. Fornri’s friend Tollof was struck by the mysterious force of a sky-man’s weapon. They thought he was dead, but a short time later he regained consciousness, though it was the following day before he could move his arms and legs. The black object was broken, but that was the fault of the skyman carrying it.

Capture of the remaining groups required complicated stalking. Finally the ship was rushed and those inside made prisoners before they were able to close the hatch. The skymen were marched to a remote stretch of beach by a meandering route deliberately chosen to confuse them. They were given food and told that on the morrow shelter would be built for them.

So helpless were they that they could not make their own fire. And when one was kindled for them, they huddled about it and listened to the whining reproaches of the leader Wembling until the distant drums of the Langri’s death procession frightened him into silence.

The following day dwellings were raised for the prisoners, and boundaries marked out that they were not to pass, for that was the Plan.

And Fornri and Dalla, that morning after the Langri’s death rites, led the fifty youths of the Langri’s class back to the Forest Village, there to grapple doubtfully with the heritage the Langri had left to them.