Rork! (17 page)

The skimmer — in the careful days of poor Starchy Manton — was considered fit to take five men. Ran packed it with fifteen, selecting the lightest ones he could find. It would take about two Wild Tocks to equal one well-nourished Guildsman in weight, anyway, he reflected. When it was well dark … that was the time.

He waited for seemingly endless hours. Then the distant night burst into noise and light. A band of ‘locksmen, holding their matches glow-end down under the cover of cloaks improvised from such spare dresses as the women could hastily round up, crept close enough to the point known to hold the guards on the path — and opened fire. The distance and angle and darkness were such that it was not likely anyone could hit anyone else. Ran did not care about that. All that he wanted was noise.

And under its cover he skimmed down into the farthest, darkest corner of the Camp, and deposited his men. Twice more he made the trip. And then those within attacked. Common sense and ordinary discipline should have restrained those of Flinders’ men down below to remain at their guard posts, but neither quality was abundant among them. When the shooting and shouting began above them they abandoned their position at once, and headed to defend their homes. And at this, all those below came streaming, scrabbling, climbing, crawling up the path.

They found the gate already half open for them. The fight had begun in the darkness, but it ended in light enough. It was by the blaze of his own blazing camp that they cornered Flinders. They tied his hands and feet and threw the rope over a beam. He swung there, upside down, screaming obscene imprecations while they carefully placed a small keg beneath his head. Then they cut his throat and lowered him a foot or two.

He died as Jun had promised. He drowned in his own blood.

Some day, Ran thought to himself, a great road would run through Rorkland, joining the North and the South. It was fortunate, ironically enough, that the present turn of events had begun when it did — when the human race was still tired. He tried to envision what that road would be like, and to calculate how near it would pass to the Plain of Lights.

The Plain of Lights! What glory! And he and Norna — Norna had left him again, this time over Lindel. She had suggested he might care to chose, he had angrily refused. But leaving was her own idea entirely. Just as well. She had a wild sweetness to her, and a wild tartness, like some unhusbanded tree of the forest and its small, shy fruits. This what he had wanted when he came here. To get away from the past, from things pruned and cultivated, to tread the untroubled soil of the naked landscape. And he had gotten his wish and heart’s desire, gotten full and heaping measure of it.

He did not begrudge a moment of it all. But he had no intention of plunging headlong down a cliff.

“After all,” he said to Lindel, “you’re scarcely the most demure, tamed little creature that ever was.” She smiled. “You were raised here, you go your own damned way … in fact, you’re a rather wild little poppet, yourself. And a rather hot little one.” But she was civlized, too. Norna wasn’t, despite the veneer of civilization gained from her father. Norna could read — just about. She knew a song or two. Her faint glimmerings of history, science, culture, the whole galactic world, were just that. Glimmerings. No —

Ran had had enough of wildness, nature, and the children of nature — barbaric chieftains and maidens. He would do his job, as he had been doing it; do it damned well, too. And then, one way or the other, he would depart. There were other worlds to see, on which the yoke of the Guild System rested lightly, if at all. The so-called “Free Worlds,” for example.

But there was time enough for that. The Q Ship was still a long time from the day when he would stuff her astonished holds with redwing. And, meanwhile —

Meanwhile the cycle of the sun had rolled around again. It was the time of the second great powwow. Once again the rolling meadows around Hollow Rock were dotted with the figures of men and of rorks. Tan Carlo Harb spoke to them from his platform outside the pavilion.

“Why should there not be lasting peace?” he asked. “The differences between men and rorks were not greater than those between men and other men. The Wild people did not trust the Guildsmen and the Guildsmen did not trust the Wild people. And between the Wild people themselves — was not there not always war, and war?”

A murmur arose when he paused. Whether of agreement of otherwise, was hard to say. And in the pause, slowly, old Dominis arose from the rock on which he’d been sitting. His beard was no whiter, certainly, but his voice was a bit weaker.

“Peace, says. And war. I sees the small ones, now, nots the same as times was. They s’ll all grows up, says. Fever s’ll not kills ‘em. Nor feudsing. A year ago, be’s I couldn’t thinks so. Be’s that I hates a Guildsman’s much’s a rork. Now, says, I gots no hates for neither.” He sat down, rather abruptly.

A pity, Ran reflected, that the old man couldn’t have developed that line more. But then someone else arose to speak, interrupting his regretful thoughts.

It was one of the minor Misters, a chief named Tarmi. Ran scarcely knew him. He had a rather reedy voice, one had to strain to listen to him.

“ — no more fever, says. Thinks that be’s a good thing. May’s be right. I s’ll not says, be’s bad. But I says, thinks on this — if men won’t be’s dying of fever, rorks won’t be’s dying of fever, either. Ah, says? Means more men, more men, more men. Means, more rorks, too, don’ts it? More rorks, more rorks….”

He was getting to them. It took time for him to develop his thoughts, they dealt with unfamiliar conceptions. But he was getting to them.

“Now. What be’s it that men wants? Redwing, be’sn’t it? Redwing, says. Pulls it, chops it, trades it, cures it. Redwing. So. What be’s it that
rorks
wants — Ah?”

The background murmur rose. He was
definitely
getting to them. People moved restlessly, spoke to their neighbors. The rorks, for the most part reclining, folded between their legs, made neither sound nor movement. And the rorkmen leaned upon their staves (they had brought no clubs this time — or, if they had, had left them somewhere out of sight of the powwow) and smiled their strange, impassive smiles. The smell of wood smoke came strong to Lomar’s nose, and, faintly, the smell of redwing.

“Ahhh … Rorks haves to eats, same as everythings. And, says, what’s it be’s that rorks eats? Says?”

Someone in the crowd cried out the answer. A dozen voices took it up, a score, a hundred.

“Redwing! Redwing! Redwing!”

Nodding and nodding, the Mister Tarmi waited for them to be done. “Redwing, says. Right. Now. I akses. Don’t says, Tarmi be’s talking against peace. No. I just akses. If men wants redwing and if rorks wants redwing, and if there be’s
more
men and
more
rorks, why — sees? — may’s be soon, may’s be later, comes the times when a man goes to chops a stalk of redwing, says, I wants this. And comes a rork, and says — ahhh —
I
wants this.”

And he sat down among tumult.

Ran raised his hands for silence and waited patiently until he got it. “There’s a Guildsman who has something to say.”

It was the Second Aide, Lindel’s father, Aquilas Arlan, so nervous, and yet, obviously so sure, that he quite forgot to titter.

“The only sensible answer to this question,” he said, “is to partition the land.” There was silence. “Divide it up,” he explained. “So that — ”

Jun Mallardy leaped forward. “Who be’s to draws the lines?” he cried.

“Why — naturally — the Guild — ”

He was drowned out by the clamor of voices. Ran looked at Harb. Harb nodded. Ran looked over towards the rorks and their men. Still none of them had moved. He caught the eye of the one called Tranakh. And Tranakh, his smile as bland (if bland it was) and curious as ever, made the slightest of movements. Gradually, gradually, the noise died down. There were still those who wanted to speak, but Ran met no one’s eye. Harb met no one’s eye. They seemed to be waiting for something. Gradually the quiet grew into absolute silence.

Still no one spoke.

Then, from among the ranks of the as yet unspeaking, a huge old rork unfolded its legs and got up. Slowly it advanced towards the men, slowly, steadily, closer than any rork had yet come that day. It had something in its mouth. The crowd fell back from either side. It was not so much uneasy, not so much astonished, as waiting. And still the great creature went on.

And stopped perhaps five paces from Tarmi.

It lifted one foot and removed what it had been holding in its mouth, and, with that foot, so curiously like and yet so vastly unlike a longer, more dangerous human hand, it lifted the thing up slowly, that all might see what it was.

A redwing plant, fresh-pulled, by the looks of it. Slowly, but with effective blows, it beat the root-end of the stalk against the ground till the clods of earth were loosed from it. Slowly, as all looked on in wonder, crowding closer, it broke the plant into two pieces. And slowly it ate the stalk piece.

And then, still slowly, it offered the leaf piece to Tarmi.

• • •

The solution, then, was so obvious, that it had until then been missed. Men and rorks had no need to compete for redwing, now or ever, no matter what their numbers might be, for
each species used a different part of the plant!

Talk went on, of course, by sheer momentum, but everything had really been settled in that few minutes of slow pantomime. And when it was at last and at length agreed that men would pull up no plants of redwing in Rorkland, but would instead go to gather the leaves which the rorks would leave behind for them, it seemed a wonder that this had not been clearly understood from the very start.

“Well, I’m very pleased,” Harb said, slowly. “I’m really very pleased. It all seems so neat that I keep thinking there must be some catch to it.”

“There are probably a million catches,” Ran said. “Sometimes they’re called by fancier names — ‘challenges,’ for example. We’ll face them when we come to them.”

The SO nodded, not quite convinced. “I can see one right now, before we even come to it. Surely the demand for redwing is not infinite. Not in the kind of frozen condition things are now, and have been for so long. Suppose the Rocks expand and increase and learn all kinds of needs and wants? They won’t be satisfied with old clothes and hack blades and sulphur forever, you know. What happens when they go on wanting to increase the market and the market isn’t going to increase?”

“That’s a long, long way from now,” Ran said. Harb brightened.

“Yes, it is. Of course it is.
I
won’t have to deal with it. I shall be eating lotos or something on a simpler and more complicated planet, nice old Harb, he spins such interesting yarns, eh? When I’m retired.”

Thus, his reaction to it all. Ran wasn’t sure yet what his own would be, or even should be. But Lindel was. “They
will
move you,” she told him. “There just isn’t any doubt about it.”

“Eh?” He looked at her, fondly, slightly bemused. His wild colonial girl! “Who? Move me where?”

“The Guild Directorate!” She seemed slightly impatient. “I know that they’ll confirm your provisional rating. You’ll be moved from three to seven. It’s inevitable, because you’ve got a record, now. They handed you an impossible assignment, and yet you did it. You can really have any place you want after this, you know. Seven! Which would you like best? Hercules, or Tarquín? Or Transfer Ten?”

“Well — ”

She babbled on, happier than he had ever seen her. “Is this what you want, really?” he asked, at last.

She broke off and looked at him in absolute astonishment. “Why, of course. It’s what I’ve always wanted — all I’ve ever wanted. To get away from here and out where things are
alive!
Civilized! A decent life, oh, Ranny!”

And he realized that it was true, and all she ever did want, really — marriage to someone of a higher Guild rank, and a soft and safe comfortable career — everything according to the book. “We might even go back to Old Earth,” she was saying. “You’ve got family and they have connections, naturally. Why, we could have an apartment in Rocky Mountain Complex. … In a few years you could be a ten!”

All she ever wanted. And all that he did not want Too bad. Too bad. Too bad for Lindel, anyway. Too bad, Lindel. The road through Rorkland would mean nothing to her, nor any of his own dreams. Because these dreams would now start coming true.

With men and men and men and rorks at peace, with the crippling fever wiped out, the continent could now start the work of building a new and decent life from its own resources. The people would not need to remain any longer a gang of errand boys for a fossilized oligarchy a world of light-years away. They had much to learn from the rorks, had barely begun to suspect how much, but the rorks might prove apt pupils, too. It was so very lucky that all this was happening now,
now,
with the rest of the human race still tired and frozen in its stodgy ways. No danger, this way, of the Tocks and rorks being overwhelmed by an exploitive technology from outside. They could go at their own pace until, eventually, they would outpace the others.

And Ran? What did
he
want? He knew, now. He wanted this. No other planet, no other world. Here was home and here he would stay and help. Only —

Only something seemed missing. Someone.

Norna.

He would find her, though. And tell her that he had made his choice.

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