The World Menders

XVII

The valley widened; the mountains diminished to an irregular, blue smudge on the east and west horizons. On the day that they completely disappeared the road divide one branch curving away to the west and above the intersection loomed ponderous stone building.

Farrari had his gril moving at loping run, so he flitted past, slowly brought the gril to a walk, and nudged its neck to turn it toward lane. A short time later he was studying the building from the shelter of zrilm hedge.

He could not make out what it was—only that it was huge and very ancient, and that the long ramps leading to its various levels stretched out like arms poised to entrap the unwary. He wondered if it were another ol monument.

There seemed to be no one about, but a trickle of smoke came from the large dwelling that stood amid the usual complex of smaller buildings a short distance away. Cautiously Farrari moved along the hedge, and when he passed the corner of the building he came upon an outside storage area filled with empty grain crocks.

It was a food-storage depot, and Farrari had never seen one. When Strunk selected teloid cubes for the Cultural Survey trainee he obviously did not consider food storage depots to be art, and this one wasn’t. It moved Farrari to think about engineering and military science, rather than architecture. This massive pile of stone could easily have served as a fort, and perhaps it once did.

He continued to puzzle at the lack of activity until he remembered that a granary was not run like a mill, that had to be operated. This time of year no one would be bringing grain for storage, and with the first tuber crop already harvested there would be little need for withdrawals—except for the one Farrari proposed to make as soon as darkness came.

Until sunset he explored the surrounding country, and then he returned to the granary, rolled a sealed crock down the ramp and across rough ground to the concealment of a zrilm hedge. As long as he remained in the neighborhood, he would be relieved of the necessity of pilfering grain from the durrlz.

Instead he stole grilz. He found a triangle of rocky land almost enclosed by the zrilm hedges of surrounding fields, and he cut zrilm branches to plug the opening, changing them frequently so they would look like a continuation of the hedge. There he kept his grilz—the one he had been riding and three others he stole from widely-separated durrlz. He took them out each night to feed and water them, rode them in turn, and continued to explore, and with a bit of charcoal he began to sketch a map on the roll of cloth he had brought with him.

The lanes produced a fantastic complex of crisscrossing lines, and ol villages blossomed on them with a regularity that left him breathless. He began to speculate as to the total ol population of Scorvif, and then, incredulously, he attempted comparisons with the rase population, whose numbers he did not know either. Was it remotely possible that the olz outnumbered their conquerors several hundred to one?

He made plans. The rascz were brilliant military tacticians, everyone said so, and Cultural Survey AT/1 Cedd Farrari knew next to nothing about military tactics. He did not need to be told that the task of outwitting them was a perilous one.

He followed the highway south for two days and nights; followed its branch west for two days and nights. He found a small rasc town where the road passed near the western mountains, but no military garrisons. Barring the chance presence of passing troops, a revolt in the lower hiingol would be free from military interference for at least four days. “The best way to defeat a foe with superior military skill,” Farrari told himself, “is to attack when he’s not around.”

He widened his range of exploration and once again began to steal from the durrlz—not grain, but the tubular grain bags. He laid out a route on his map and reconnoitered it carefully, calculating distances in the slouching ol pace. Suddenly he was ready, no reason to delay longer, nothing ventured nothing gained, nothing at all would come to an IPR agent who waited except old age, and old age on Branoff IV wasn’t worth waiting for. He rode out of the night to loom over the nightfire of ol village One. “Come!”

Bearing torches, they followed him. Villages Two, Three, Four—the ranks of Farrari’s army swelled and his confidence soared with each new addition. The route to village Five followed a long stretch of straight lane, and when Farrari looked back it seemed to him that there were very few torches behind him. He turned to investigate and came much too quickly to the end of the column. Only the olz of village Four were following. The others had gone back. He hurriedly retraced his steps. At village Three he found those olz resuming their meal around a replenished nightfire. Village Two, village One—his schedule was ruined, but stubbornly he started over again. “Come!”

When he reached the same stretch of straight lane, only the olz of village Four were following him. He grunted the word that sent them back to their village and retired to a hiding place to think.

He had been certain that the olz traveled long distances carrying their dead, but perhaps they merely passed them from village to village. His own memories of the feverish nights when he was one with the ol dead were too vague to be helpful.

“It’s possible,” he told himself, “that the olz never have gone—and therefore won’t go—farther from home than the next village. It’s also possible that they’ve never been involved in a project that required more workers than the population of their own village. They’d think they were no longer needed the moment I asked another village to join me.”

Either way, the movements of the mighty army he had envisioned were likely to be somewhat limited: his soldiers refused to leave home.

He could not sleep. His gril crushing grain kernels with its horn lips, adding a crunching sound to the rattling of the zrilm leaves, and Fararri’s mind kept contending with till silly notion of overwhelming militarily talented people with sheer numbers of clods who had never handled a weapon.

He needed help. A handful of IPR agents, or even one, could have kept the olz marching, but if he were so rash as to apply for assistance Jorrul would orate three pages of regulations to demonstrate that what he wanted to do was either impossible or forbidden.

He sat up suddenly. Distance, or the number of olz involved, had nothing to do with it. He had asked the olz to do something totally outside their experience: travel, with no accompanying work. If they carried their dead long distances, it was because there was labor to perform: transporting the bodies.

All he needed was a job of work for them to do on the march. “Something to carry,” he mused. “Weapons would be ideal—it’d give them labor to perform and at the same time make it look as though they were revolting. But where would I find enough weapons for an army of olz?” He didn’t even have non-weapons for them to carry.

Then he remembered his grain bags.

After five nights of frenzied activity he was ready to begin again. He led the olz of village number One to a cache of grain bags and distributed them, an armful to each adult ol. They marched into the night. At the next village he redistributed the bags, did so again at the third and the fourth—in the straight lane he looked back at an unending procession of torches. Village Five, village Six, another cache of bags—through the night Farrari’s army marched with slouching, dragging footsteps and grew village by village. At dawn a thousand olz were dutifully trailing after him and several durrlz were finding, to their consternation, that their work force had disappeared.

He brought his gril to a stop where the lane opened onto a durrl’s headquarters and waved his olz forward, telling them to drink and eat. As they moved up the slope toward the buildings, the durrl appeared and for a moment stood staring down the slope.

Farrari jerked his gril behind the zrilm, cursing himself for his monumental stupidity. If a word from a synthetic assistant durrl would set an army of olz in motion, a word from a genuine durrl would certainly send it home again.

When next he looked, the durrl, his assistants, their families and servants, were fleeing in panic. As the olz advanced up the slope they disappeared down the far side, obviously running for their lives, and took refuge in a zrilm hedge. Farrari recovered his composure and opened the grain and tuber stores and set the olz to raiding the durrl’s stocks of quarm. Soon the circle of buildings was filled with ol fires, everything Farrari could find in house or barn that could serve as a cooking utensil was in use, and the olz were gathered in mute circles waiting for their food. Farrari kept a wary eye on the zrilm where the rascz had disappeared. After a time they realized that there was no pursuit, and they emerged from hiding and hurried away.

Farrari rushed the olz through their meal, and before moving on he issued rations to them: a tuber and a measure of grain for each ol. There would be other durrl headquarters to raid, but this gave the olz something to carry in their grain bags.

The march resumed, with Farrari climbing stiles to recruit olz who were at work in the fields, and instead of avoiding the durrlz he began to seek them out—but every headquarters was deserted. The first fugitives must have sounded the alarm, and word of the marching olz had spread with a swiftness Farrari hesitated to believe.

At dusk they reached the highway, and Farrari left his swollen army resting around nightfires and sent his gril scampering east. At dawn he was back with another, smaller group of olz, and while they rested and ate he marched the first olz onto the highway and turned them south.

He could not have imagined a shoddier-looking army. It slouched forward, a motley, unarmed crowd lacking even the demented sense of purpose that chacterized a mob. The second group followed the first, and in the wake of both came a straggling tail of enfeebled sick, young children, and women carrying children, and these Farrari halted where the highway crossed a rippling stream of clear water. He left them in the shade of a zrilm hedge to await the return of the others. Then he rode along the marching column grunting orders to keep the olz moving.

They met no traffic, nor did any overtake them. For some reason Farrari never expected to understand, the rascz saw his farcical army as a sinuous monster flowing with irresistible force, and they had carried the warning in all directions.

At midafternoon they reached the deserted granary. Farrari attacked the huge grain crocks with a thick piece of quarm, and as each shattered, the lustrous, red-tinted grain gushed forth. A word and a gesture from Farrari, and the olz began filling their bags. As each ol emerged Farrari spoke two words. “Home Quickly!” The olz had only one speed, but impressed with the need for haste they would at least keep moving tirelessly.

Darkness fell. Olz stood by with torches, and at regular intervals Farrari dispatched one to light the way for the olz with full grain bags. “Home! Quickly!” Finally most them were gone. Stragglers kept arriving, but Farrari left them to figure out for themselves what they were do.

After formulating so many unsuccessful experiments, he could not believe that this one had worked. It seemed utterly unreal to him, never happened, but the depot supervisor would have only shattered crocks to show for a vast quantity of vanished grain and on the highway the torches were marching north. It would be morning before the first word of the uprising could reach anyone capable of dealing with it, two additional days before the army could arrive, and long before then the olz would be peacefully at work in their fields or wandering about hopelessly lost. In either case the rascz would be befuddled, a lengthy investigation would be required, and with any luck at all a portion of the kru’s army would be occupied indefinitely. As a bonus, the olz in the lower hilngol would eat well that summer and might even have a reserve of grain for winter. It was, Farrari told himself, a most successful beginning.

He filled his own grain bags, strapped them to his extra grilz, and took the south fork of the highway.

At dawn he changed mounts and rode at top speed until he sensed that his gril was tiring. Then he stopped to feed and water the grilz before he raced on. He still met no traffic, but he began to overtake refugees. He happened onto the first group unexpectedly as he topped a hill—a durrl and his dependents, the women and children in wagons with a few belongings, the men riding grilz. It was too late to turn aside, they had already seen him, so he swept past them and quickly left them far behind.

Later he passed other groups without arousing so much as a questioning look. To the fastidiously law-abiding rascz, the mere fact of a durrl’s assistant racing along the highway with four grilz was proof enough of his right to do so.

A surge of wild exhilaration displaced his alarm. The rascz were fleeing from the olz! They seemed to be taking their time about it, as though they knew that even a narmpf could keep ahead of walking olz, and they obviously had the air of people going somewhere, rather than of running away from something, but even this sober afterthought could not diminish his satisfaction. The rascz were refugees!

On the second day he saw the highway ahead of him filled with the kru’s cavalry. He turned aside and waited in the safety of a lane until the column had passed, not wanting to find out whether soldiers might have a more highly developed sense of curiosity than ordinary citizens. Later he met more cavalry, and on the following day he made a wide circle to avoid the garrison town that was the refugees’ objective.

He continued south, riding hard by day, alternating his grilz, walking them through the night, and avoiding the occasional town, until both he and the animals were exhausted. Somewhere off to the west the city of Scory stood smugly atop its invulnerable hill, and he was impatient to get there. He snapped the harness and urged his gril to greater speed.

In the remote southeastern corner of the lilorr he began again. He stole grain bags and cached them, and when he had enough he pronounced the magic word, “Come!” and led an entire village of olz from the night-fire. And another. And another. At dawn he separated the young, the sickly, and women with young children and turned them back, because this army had much farther to go. He got the olz onto the highway and headed north, and he ranged widely both day and night, recruiting olz and searching out deserted durrl headquarters to plunder for food and grain bags. He exchanged his worn-out grilz for grilz the durrlz had abandoned in their sudden flight. He saw no durrlz, no rascz. Again the alarm had spread instantaneously on the first glimpse of the massed olz.

He began to experiment. He selected an ol of unusually large stature, positioned him at the head of the column each morning, and had him make the gesture of movement and call out, “Come!” By the third morning Farrari was no longer needed to get the march started.

At night Farrari scattered his olz among the local ol villages, marching a delegation to rob the local durrl of the necessary food. The crowds were so huge around the nightfires that sometimes the cooking pot was emptied and refilled all through the night.

And at dawn the chosen leader would take his place in the highway, gesture, mouth a word, and the march would recommence. On the seventh morning Farrari watched the olz out of sight, and then he led them. He traveled south until he reached an east-west highway, and then he raced west at top speed. Toward the river.

Again he traveled day and night, and this time he met no one, overtook no one. The highway ended in sight of the immensely broad, swift river. He could not coax the grilz into the water, so after securing a piece of quarm log from the nearest ol village he turned them loose, made a bundle of his clothing, and as soon as darkness fell he pushed the log into the water. Choosing a pattern of stars to steer by, he struck out for the opposite shore. Grueling hours later he landed far downstream. He rested the next day, stole a gril and a bundle of grain bags the following night, and after a day of reconnoitering he appeared at an ol nightfire. “Come!”

Now he singled out only the most able looking males. The next morning, when he reached a north-south highway, he had a mere hundred ol following him, but they were the best looking olz he had ever seen. He appointed a leader and got the column started.

Toward Scorv.