The World Menders

communication network.”

“Why don’t you move your office down here? I’m the only base specialist left with a workroom of his own.”

“I’ll think about it. I keep being interrupted, too, and moving my office wouldn’t help. I spent my much interrupted afternoon yesterday trying to identify Bran for you, but I couldn’t. There’s no doubt at all about his being an IPR agent?”

“No doubt at all.”

“Strunk is holding some photos for you to look at when you have time. Unfortunately, they’re regular identification photos. We’ve never bothered to keep a file of photos of our agents in their native disguises. Now I suppose we’ll have to. Is there anything new on the cave carvings?”

“The super-specialists are willing to go along with me if I’ll explain why anyone would go to so much trouble.”

“The possibility of overthrowing a government must have a certain allure to it,” the coordinator said. “On any world people are likely to go to considerable trouble and expense.”

“Someone did,” Farrari said. “Someone who maybe thought past failures with the olz were due to their not being properly motivated. Obviously the rascz do think the olz are human, or at least they did in ancient times. They tried to use something that would have worked beautifully with their own race—a cult of ol supremacy with carvings showing olz as masters of Scorvif. After the insurrection was crushed, the kru—or his priests—was sufficiently impressed to keep a censored version of the cult going as the ol religion, perhaps to make certain that the same gimmick wouldn’t be used again. The yilescz may have come into being at the same time, not to minister to the olz, but to spy on them. In some later insurrection the yilescz may have sold out to the rebels, which would account for their present ambivalent status.”

“It’s possible,” the coordinator agreed. “On this world I’m beginning to think that anything is possible.”

One of the linguists looked in, nodded at Farrari. “We make it eighty-two, but we can’t agree on the variants. There may be as few as dozen or as many as fifty.”

“It amounts to a fair-sized pseudo vocabulary,” Farrari observed.

The linguist nodded. “If they’r animals, they’re unique.”

“If they’re human, they’re unique, too,” Farrari said.

The linguist went away, and the coordinator said with a chuckle, “All of this is shaking the Bureau to its time-honored foundations. Every problem world will have to be restudied, and the Bureau doesn’t have the right kind of specialists to do the job. It doesn’t have a single expert in animal communication or sociology or anything remotely connected with such things. It’s never needed any.”

“If it’d had some, maybe they would have been needed,” Farrari said.

Jorrul hobbled in and seated himself on an unused table. “Big ruckus at the other end of the corridor,” he said. “Super-specialist claims this CS trainee Farrari states in a report that he saw the olz build a shrine to a dead durrl and worship him.”

“Wrong,” Farrari said. “I said that’s what it looked like to me. What they thought it was I have no idea.”

“Could the rascz have taught it to them?” Jorrul asked.

“It’s very likely. Just as the rascz probably taught them their religion, if you want to call it that, and taught the olz of the caretaker villages to look after the dead. Obviously the olz have a startling capacity for learned responses, and just as obviously the rascz can’t comprehend that there is no rationale whatsoever behind those responses. Or they couldn’t comprehend it at the time they set up the religion. It all happened so long ago that very few rascz today are aware that the olz are supposed to have one.”

“I’ve been asked for recommendations on future Bureau operations on Branoff IV,” Jorrul said. “No one seems to have reached any conclusions about this thing—all they do is stand around and argue about it—but they want me to make recommendations for future operations.”

“You might suggest that we try to influence the rascz to send expeditions beyond the mountains to search for new food plants,” Farrari said. “It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they found some.”

“It’d surprise me,” Jorrul growled.

“It wouldn’t surprise me, because I’d include in the recommendation the suggestion that IPR import some that are suitable for this world and plant them so they’ll be there waiting for the expeditions.”

“You’re out of your mind!”

“This nonsense about strict adherence to principles in the face of dwindling food production that’ll eventually destroy the world’s only civilization has been carried far enough. Second, I’d recommend that IPR make a serious attempt to exploit the malsz.”

“What are the malsz?” the coordinator wanted to know.

“Neighborhood gossip clubs,” Jorrul said. “What’s there to exploit about them?”

“They elect their own officers, don’t they? And they have important responsibilities concerning sanitation and keeping the streets clean.”

“If you want to call them important.”

“Don’t you think it rather remarkable that there are flourishing democratic institutions, however small and insignificant, right under the entrenched toes of an absolute monarchy? Combine the malsz into a city-wide organization, and you have the rudimentary basis for a national democracy.”

“The rascz aren’t ready for the idea,” Jorrul said.

Farrari said disgustedly, “IPR still doesn’t understand the incredible error it’s made on this planet. It set up a two thousand year plan to democratize the olz, who need fifty or a thousand times that, and it virtually ignored the rascz, who are so ripe for democracy that they’re fumbling toward it on their own. Here’s another motto for your IPR manual: THE BEST WAY TO DETERMINE WHETHER OR NOT A PEOPLE ARE READY FOR AN IDEA IS TO SUGGEST IT TO THEM.”

“All right,” Jorrul said. “We’ll suggest it. What about the olz?” Farrari shook his head.

“Your second pilgrimage to the Life Temple bore results—did they tell you? The kru issued a stern order against mistreating an ol. The priests will also waste a lot of theology on your blunt statement that the olz are the kru’s people, but that won’t get the olz an adequate diet in winter.”

“It’ll take new food crops to do that.”

“I’ll suggest them. What’s the object of this new complex of laboratories?”

“To learn,” Farrari said.

“That sounds like an excellent suggestion, the kind Bureau Headquarters hardly ever turns down. As concerns the olz, I’ll recommend that we learn something about them, with the added information that our local ol expert already has several laboratory programs in operation.”

“As long as you don’t identify the ol expert, that’s satisfactory with me,” Farrari said. “I’m being asked too many questions as it is.”

Jorrul pushed himself to his feet and reached for his cane.

“Come and visit us?” Farrari asked.

“I will,” Jorrul promised. “The first chance I get.”

He hobbled away.

“Are you leaving right away?” the coordinator asked.

“Yes. Unless I’m ordered, I won’t be back until the mob disperses.”

“I won’t order you unless someone orders me,” The coordinator promised. “I think