The World Menders

XIII

Bran gobbled a package of rations, yawned sleepily, flexed muscles that were painfully protesting his unwonted exertions, and returned to bed. Farrari strolled outside to explore the valley. He followed the stream from the foaming waterfall of its entry to the point where it abruptly plummeted into an underground void and disappeared. Sometime in the remote past a rockfall had blocked the end of the valley, probably creating a lake, and the water had honeycombed the valley walls with caves.

He looked into several of them, wondering if any gave egress from the valley; but he had brought no light with him, so he abandoned the caves and climbed a short distance up the opposite slope. There he stretched out on the soft grass, luxuriating in the warm sunshine and the fact that he could, for a moment, relax and be himself.

He dozed off, to wake with a start when a drifting cloud cut off the sun. Reluctantly he got to his feet and moved on. A short distance down the slope he happened onto another cave opening, and its arch looked so perfectly symmetrical that he went to investigate. The entranceway was as regularly shaped as the opening except for loose rock strewn about on the floor, and the soft stone walls had been lined with slabs of a type of Marble Farrari had not seen before.

Farrari was still pondering the significance of this when he made out, on the smooth, creamy surface of the marble, a carving in low relief. For a long, breathless moment he stared at it, and then he turned and ran.

Bran was still asleep. Farrari gave him a furious shake and panted: “The light! The handlight! Where is it?”

Bran pointed sleepily, and then, as Farrari snatched at it, straightened up and blurted, “What’s the matter?”

Farrari shook his head and dashed away. He was halfway across the valley when he heard a shout and saw Bran stumbling after him. He ran on, and when Bran finally came up to him Farrari was standing just inside the cave opening, despondently shining the light on rubble that completely filled the cave a short distance from its entrance.

“What’s that?” Bran muttered.

“The ceiling must have collapsed,” he said.

“What about it?” Bran panted.

“Look!” Farrari exclaimed. He flashed the light first on one wall and then on the other, and it brought to life a procession of carved figures on either side, marching boldly toward the rubble-choked interior.

Bran gaped perplexedly and finally said, “So?”

“Did you know this was here?” “No,” Bran admitted, and his tone suggested that he wasn’t particularly concerned now that he did know. “What’s so special about carvings? You can find them all over Scorvif.”

“In caves?” Farrari asked.

Bran pawed his hair fretfully. “On buildings, mostly. Don’t think I ever saw any in caves. Does it matter?”

“These carvings matter. They’d make a lot of base specialists turn handsprings—the historians, the philologists, the archeologists, anyone interested in origins.”

Bran looked blankly at the carvings. “What’s so special about them?”

“They’re carvings of olz!” Farrari whispered awesomely. “Don’t you see what that means? The olz did have a civilization and a highly advanced culture. Their work is more primitive than that of the rascz, but at the same time it’s more vigorous, more alive and expressive. This also proves that the racsz have a tremendous artistry in their own right, but no one has ever doubted that. They began by imitating the people they conquered and eventually surpassed them in many respects. But the olz did have a civilization!”

“So how does that help them now?” Bran demanded. “They’re still slaves, and they still want to die.”

Farrari sat down on a rock and focused the light on the nearest carving. “Do they ever commit suicide?” he asked.

Bran dropped onto a nearby rock and flexed his legs. “Muscles killing me,” he moaned. “I’m too old. What were you saying? The olz? Commit suicide? Not that I ever heard of.”

“If they’re so intent on dying, why do they wait for those terrible beatings, or for a lingering death by starvation or disease? Why don’t they do the job themselves? Surely they could contrive a death that would be quick and painless.”

“I don’t know. They just don’t.”

“Don’t any of them commit suicide?”

Bran shook his head.

“Do you know of even one suicide, or have you ever heard of one?” Farrari persisted.

“No. They haven’t the spunk for it.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Branoff IV doesn’t have any of those civilized refinements that make for a quick and painless death. It takes gumption to commit suicide in a primitive society, and the olz don’t have any. How much would you have if for uncounted generations your race had been humiliated and tortured and murdered, men whipped to insensibility and death before their families for the most trivial offense, men having to stand by and watch their wives and children whipped. Any olz with gumption would have resisted and been killed when they were first enslaved. Those who could grovel the best survived, and now all the survivors have groveled for so long that they think groveling is all they’re fit for. I don’t blame them for wanting to die.”

“There must be more to it than that,” Farrari objected.

“Then why did they run off when I tried to keep them alive’?” Bran demanded.

“I don’t know. I’ve been wondering why they don’t steal food. They could, easily. What you’re saying is that they’ve lost all self-respect—lost it so totally that they prefer death to further humiliation.”

“Right.” Bran nodded emphatically and regarded Farrari with interest. “Self-respect. That’s it. IPR can’t give that to them because there’s nothing in the manual about self-respect. If it was a disease they had, the base doctor would concoct a serum and the agents would go around pouring it into the soup pots, and the first thing you’d know we’d have a nice revolution going. But there isn’t any medicine that can cure a lack of self-respect.”

“And yet—there are olz who want to live,” Farrari said thoughtfully. “I was with Liano Kurn when the plague started—she was a yilese and I was her kewl—and a dying ol came to tell us his village needed help. It was raining and he ran though clay so sticky that I had trouble walking in it and he climbed a slope steep I would have had a hard time climbing it in dry weather. He dropped dead. If he was so intent on dying, why would he make that heroic effort to get assistance?”

“I don’t know. I never met any olz like that. I’d hoped there were some, but I never met any.”

“So how do we go about restoring their self-respect?”

“They need a victory over the rascz. It wouldn’t be hard to arrange one, but the moment word got out that there’d been an uprising, soldiers would come and kill all the olz in the neighborhood. Self-respect wouldn’t be of much use to them if they died immediately after they got it.”

“It wouldn’t be an encouraging example for other olz, either,” Farrari said. “Have you thought of arming them?”

“What good is a weapon without the desire to use it?”

“Or the skill,” Farrari suggested. “The kru’s soldiers probably put in years of practice in throwing spears before they’re promoted to the cavalry.” He got to his feet, picked up a rock, and threw it toward the entrance. “Self-respect. It’s something to think about.”

“What are you doing’?” Bran demanded.

“I’m going to clear out this passage. I want to see the rest of the murals.”

“It’d take machines to move some of those rocks,” Bran said. Farrari heaved another rock toward the entrance. “Is it possible that the ol civilization used caves for dwellings?”

“It’s possible that you’ll bring the rest of the ceiling down on your head,” Bran growled. He left muttering to himself, and Farrari labored for hours before he finally gave up. Many of the huge slabs of rock would have required a machine to move them, and the rubble obviously extended far back into the cave.

On one side he managed to bare a few more meters of the mural, and he remained there looking at it until darkness fell and Bran returned to caution him about showing a light at night—base’s platforms sometimes flew near.

He had uncovered several of the older, massive buildings of Scorv, shown before the time when the city became crowded and the ponderous concepts of its architecture were diluted. Beyond them stood the Tower-of-a-Thousand-Eyes without the kru’s Life Temple surrounding it, and the kru’s portrait above its entrance was the portrait of an ol.

Farrari ate a belated supper in the blacked-out cave, and Bran, who had already eaten, joined him for a second meal. Farrari asked suddenly, “Isn’t there some way the olz could achieve a victory over the rascz without giving cause for calling out the militia?”

Bran chewed thoughtfully and swallowed before he answered. “Anything that mild wouldn’t be a victory,” he answered gloomily.

“Suppose the olz were to ridicule a durrl? He wouldn’t call out the soldiers because his olz were disrespectful. He’d be too embarrassed to admit it.”

Bran shook his head. “The olz would never be disrespectful to a durrl.

“I know two who would.”

A look of wild surmise transformed Bran’s hideous face, and just as abruptly he became despondent again. “What would it accomplish? He wouldn’t call out the soldiers, he’d just whip to death anyone who saw it.”

“He’d have to start with us,” Farrari said, “and any durrl who tries to whip me is going to get a whipping with his own whip. If we don’t take some risk, we’ll never do anything.”

Bran was silent for a long time. “You’re right,” he said finally. “I’ve thought and thought about this for years and I’ve never done anything. We’ll go tonight.”

“Can we take some food for the olz?”

“They don’t need food this time of year,” Bran said, and added wistfully, “If you want to take food, figure out how to take some IPR rations for us.”

“Pack some on the platform,” Farrari suggested. “Whenever you’re hungry you can sneak away for a meal.”

“I’ll do that,” Bran agreed, immediately more cheerful.

They landed near the village Bran had selected, concealed the platform in a zrilm hedge, and joined the olz at dawn. If the olz found anything remarkable about the sudden increase in their village’s population they gave no sign of it. A short time later, divided into small groups, they were hard at work in the fields.

Farrari, accustomed to the tedious, energy-sapping labor, applied his stone-tipped hoe stoically and tried to ignore the sweltering sun. Bran suffered cruelly, and as the day wore on Farrari became increasingly concerned about him. The olz would not have understood his affliction because no ol lived long enough to become enfeebled by old age, and Bran was an old man. By late afternoon he was reeling alarmingly and showing signs of a high fever. Farrari finally went to his assistance.

“I’ll stick it out,” Bran muttered. “You will not. What’s the procedure when an ol gets sick?”

“There isn’t any. He works until he drops, and no one pays any attention to him until the end of the day. Then they carry him back to the village. Dead or alive.”

“Then it’s time someone created a precedence.”

He helped Bran over the stiles. Neither the olz in their field nor in the field they had to cross seemed to notice. They gained the lane, turned away from the village, and a short distance further on sought refuge in the zrilm. Bran was dehydrated and in an agony of thirst, but he insisted that they both remain in hiding until dark. “Can’t risk it,” he muttered. “Running off like that, we’ll be missed if they check the field again.”

“Again?” Farrari repeated blankly.

“Durrl’s assistant looked in this morning.”

“He just climbed the stile, looked, and went away. That’s as much checking as they’re likely to do this time of year, but he may look again on his way back. A durrl’s assistant is trained to notice things like too few oiz working a field.” He panted for a few minutes and then croaked with parched lips “I’m getting old.”

“How frequently does the durrl himself come around?” Farrari asked.

“This time of year, maybe not at all. There’s no close supervision like at planting time, when the olz might eat the seed stock instead of planting it, or at harvest time, when the olz might eat in the field instead of waiting to have some of the food they’ve just harvested rationed out to them.”

“How frequently does the durrl inspect a village?”

“He doesn’t, not unless something unusual happens. Not during the warm months. If so many olz got sick that the cultivating was neglected, he might look in to make certain that they weren’t shirking.”

“Olz never shirk,” Farrari said. “No, but the durrl looks at it from the point of view of the rascz, and if the rascz were slaves they’d shirk so he figures the olz will shirk if he lets them get away with it. During the winter he’ll visit the villages once in a while to check the death rate and try to figure out whether the olz can last until spring planting without special rations.” He turned slowly. “Now I see what you’re driving at. We want to embarrass a durrl in front of the olz and we can’t. When they’re at work there are too few of them in one field to matter, it’d be a waste of time to embarrass a durrl with less than a whole village looking on, and the only time that could happen is during the winter when the olz are too hungry and sick to care whether a durrl is embarrassed or not. I’m getting old.” He sighed. “I should have thought of that.”

“We’ll contrive something,” Farrari said confidently.

Bran shook his head. “No. It was a silly idea.”

“What would happen if an aristocrat walked into a village at dawn and told the olz to take the day off?”

“They’d stay in the village. Something like that does happen now and then, usually when the ground is so wet that cultivation might damage the crops. It isn’t thought of as giving the olz a day off, but as letting the fields rest, and no aristocrat would set foot in an ol village. I’ve never heard of one being able to speak ol. The durrl’s assistants would take care of it.”

“You dressed as an aristocrat and ordered olz about.”

Bran shrugged. “The olz don’t know that an aristocrat isn’t supposed to speak ol. They don’t know one rasc from another. They’d obey anyone dressed in any kind of rasc costume. I just happen to have some aristocrat robes.”

“What would a durrl do if one of his olz ran up and told him that a strange rasc demanded his presence at the village?”

Bran chuckled. “You can’t say that in ol, but you can say enough to make the durrl think someone important wants him. He’d kill his gril getting there.”

“Would he send an assistant?” “Not a chance.”

“And if he arrived and found no rasc but a whole village of loafing olz?”

“He’d be incensed,” Bran said.

“I hope so, because it’s the mood that’ll make him the most vulnerable. That’s what we’ll do—use your aristocrat robes, order the olz to let the fields rest, and send one of them for the durrl.”

“It might work,” Bran admitted. “We’ll try it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow you’re going to rest, and then we’ll work out some practical jokes. And then we’ll go far enough away so that the village we choose won’t have heard about our” peculiar conduct today.”

Again they reached a village at dawn. The olz reacted as Bran had predicted: a few grunted words from a pseudo-aristocrat, which they heard with heads bowed, and they immediately returned to the fire pit. The fire had gone out, but they grouped about the cold ashes just as they crowded about a night-fire. That was, seemingly, the only thing they had to do on a day of leisure.

A young ol was chosen, and after a grunted instruction he whirled obediently and ran off. Farrari and Bran left in the opposite direction, cached their costumes with the platform, and returned to the village as olz. They took their places by the dead fire and waited.

The durrl arrived on a racing, panting gril and when he saw no aristocrat, only his olz huddled about a nonexistent fire, he leaped. from his gril in a thunderous rage and began to berate them. The ol language was unequal to his anger, and most of what he said was in Rasczian.

Farrari edged away, gained a position behind the durrl, and began to mimic him. The durrl gestured, tamped a foot, waved his arms. Farrari did the same. Bran had made his way to the gril, and he quickly tied a cord to a front foot and the opposite hind foot. Even if their scenario failed, the durrl’s departure was certain to be less than dignified.

As the olz became aware of what was happening, one after another raised his head in appalling disrespect to stare past the durrl at Farrari. Their expressionless faces provided no clue to their thoughts, but the fact that they dared to look seemed promising.

The durrl finally became aware that he had less than their complete attention. He pivoted slowly; Farrari pivoted slowly. He turned again; Farrari turned again. That happened twice before the durrl understood what was happening. With a bellow of rage he confronted Farrari.

Bran scurried into position behind the durrl. Farrari delivered a vigorous push, and the durrl went over backward in a tumultuous flutter of robes. He scrambled to his feet bellowing and raced to the gril to snatch his zrilm whip. Farrari faced him calmly as he raised the branch for a flesh-tearing stroke. Bran was in position again, and he adroitly jerked the zrilm from the durrl’s hand and flung it aside.

The durrl, his rage beyond containment, leaped onto his gril and kicked at the beast’s flanks. The gril attempted to leap forward and fell heavily, and the durrl pitched over its head and landed with a sickening thud.

Bran quickly removed the chord from the gril’s legs, and the beast scrambled to its feet and stood trembling. The watching olz did not move.

Neither did the durrl. When Farrari went to him he found him dead, his neck broken.

Farrari beckoned Bran to his side and hissed, “Some joke. What happens now?”

“I don’t know,” Bran said soberly.

“We can’t run off and leave them.”

“No. We’ll have to stay and see them through.”

“Shall we send for the durrl’s assistants?” Farrari asked.

“I think we’d best let the olz handle it now.”

The olz drew nearer, their eyes on the durrl. A woman raised a sobbing cry, another joined her, and another, and their wails became a choked chorus of weird laments. An ol wandered off aimlessly and returned with a large rock. He flung it to the ground in the open space near the fire pit. Others brought more rocks. A hut was torn apart and its sticks and chunks of hard Clay added to the pile. Finally the durrl’s body was gently carried there and propped into a sitting position.

“An altar,” Farrari muttered. Bran said nothing.

The olz prostrated themselves before the dead durrl, lying motionless with their faces in the dust. They remained there, Bran and Farrari with them, while the sun rose high in the sky and the temperature became stifling. It was nearly midday when one of the durrl’s assistants came lloking for him and found the strange taoleau: the durrl dead and the entire village performing obeisance to his body.

He jerked an ol to his feet and angrily shouted a question. The ol grunted an answer: gril fell, rider fell. The gril still stood nearby, its coat clotted with blood and dust. The assistant examined it, examined the durrl, and asked no more questions.

He returned with another assistant and removed the durrl’s body in a wagon. The olz remained prostrate. Night came, but they did not light a fire. They remained there through the night and all of the next day, raising sporadic laments, and when night came again they finally stirred themselves—and moved. They divided up their scant stores and scattered to neighboring villages. Bran and Farrari waited another day, but none of the olz returned.

That night they returned to the platform and flew back to Bran’s valley.

“So much for their self-respect,” Farrari remarked bitterly.

Bran was merely incredulous. “They worshiped him!” he blurted. Farrari nodded. “I knew it wouldn’t be simple, but I never expected anything like this. How do you organize a revolt against the gods?”