“I—yes. I’ve heard.”
“Good. I doubt that any of the savages have, although they are surprisingly well informed in certain respects. The device is not new or secret, but with galactic information flow as inadequate as it is, especially here on what was a sleepy backwater… Let me refresh your memory, sir. Substitute this device for the primary modulator in any energy weapon of the third or fourth class. The weapon will thereupon become a maser communicator, projecting the human voice to a considerable distance. I shall ask Admiral Cruz to order at least one of his orbital ships brought low and illuminated for the next several weeks, so that you may have a target to aim at. If you find yourself in an important concentration of the enemy’s—where surely stolen energy weapons will be kept—and if you get an opportunity to call down a warcraft ,… Do you follow me?”
“But,” Ridenour stammered. “But. How?”
“As mayor, i knew that such devices were included in the last consignment of defensive materials that the Navy sent to Domkirk. I knew that one was carried on every military aircraft of ours. And several military aircraft were among those stolen last night. I watched my chance, I made myself ridiculous, and—” Uriason threw out his chest, thereby also throwing out his belly—“at the appropriate moment, I palmed this one from beneath the noses of the wrecking crew.”
Ridenour wet his lips. They felt sandpapery. “I could’ve guessed that much,” he got out. “But me—I—how —”
“It would not be in character for me to accompany the savages into their wilderness,” Uriason said.
“They would be entirely too suspicious. Can I, can Freehold, can His Majesty and the entire human species rely upon you, sir?”
The man was short and fat. His words rose like hot-air balloons. Nevertheless, had he dared under possible observation, Ridenour would have bowed most deeply. As matters were, the Terran could just say, “Yes, Citizen Mayor, I’ll try to do ply best.”
These were the stages of their journey:
Karlsarm walked beside Ridenour, amicably answering questions. But wariness crouched behind. He wasn’t altogether convinced that this man’s reasons for coming along were purely scientific and diplomatic. At least, he’d better not be, yet. Sometimes he thought that humans from the inner Empire were harder to fathom than most nonhumans. Being of the same species, talking much the same language, they ought to react in the same ways as your own people. And they didn’t. The very facial expressions, a frown, a smile, were subtly foreign.
Ridenour, for immediate example, was courteous, helpful, even genial: but entirely on the surface. He showed nothing of his real self. No doubt he loved his family and was loyal to his Emperor and enjoyed his work and was interested in many other aspects of reality. He spoke of such things. But the emotion didn’t come through. He made no effort to share his feelings, rather he kept them to himself with an ease too great to be conscious.
Karlsarm had encountered the type before, offplanet. He speculated that reserve was more than an aristocrat’s idea of good manners; it was a defense. Jammed together with billions of others, wired from before birth into a network of communication, coordination, impersonal omnipotent social machinery, the human being, could only protect his individuality by making his inner self a fortress. Here, in the outback of Freehold, you had room; neither people nor organizations pressed close upon you; if anything, you grew eager for intimacy. Karlsarrn felt sorry for Terrans. But that did not help him understand or trust them.
“You surprise me pleasantly,” he remarked. “I didn’t expect you’d keep up with us the way you do.”
“Well, I try to stay in condition,” Ridenour said. “And remember, I’m used to somewhat higher gravity. But to be honest, I expected a far more difficult trip—narrow muddly trails and the like. You have a road here.”
“Hm, I don’t think a lot of it. We do better elsewhere. But then, this is a distant marchland for us.”
Both men glanced around. The path crossed a high hillside, smoothly graded and switchbacked, surface planted in a mossy growth so tough and dense that no weeds could force themselves in. (It was a specially bred variety which, among other traits, required traces of manganese salt. Maintenance gangs supplied this from time to time, and thus automatically kept the moss within proper bounds.) The path was narrow, overarched by forest, a sun-speckled cool corridor where birds whistled and a nearby cataract rang. Because of its twistings, few other people were visible, though the party totalled hundreds.
Most of them were on different courses anyhow. Karlsarm had explained that the Free People laid out as many small, interconnected, more or less parallel ways as the traffic in a given area demanded, rather than a single broad highroad. It was easier to do, less damaging to ecology and scenery, more flexible to changing situations. Also, it was generally undetectable from above. He had not seen fit to mention the other mutant plant types, sown throughout this country, whose exudates masked those of human metabolism and thereby protected his men from airborne chemical sniffers.
“I’ve heard you use beasts of burden in a limited fashion,” Ridenour said.
“Yes, horses and stathas have been naturalized here,” Karlsarm said. “And actually, in our central regions, we keep many. City folk see just a few, because we don’t often bring them to our thinly populated borderlands. No reason for it. You can go about as fast on foot, when you aren’t overloaded with gear. But at home you’ll see animals, wagons—boats and rafts, for that matter—in respectable totals.”
“Your population must be larger than is guessed, then.”
“I don’t know what the current guess is in the Cities. And we don’t bother with, uh, a census. But. I’d estimate twenty million of us on this continent, and about the same for the others. Been stable for a long time. That’s the proper human density. We don’t crowd each other or press hard on natural resources. And so we’ve got abundant free food and stuff. No special effort involved in satisfying the basic needs. At the same time, there
“How do you maintain a level population? You don’t appear to have any strong compulsion mechanism.”
“No, we haven’t. Tradition, public opinion, the need to help your neighbor so he’ll help you, the fact that out- and-out bastards get into quarrels and eventually get killed—such factors Will do, when you have elbow room. The population-control device is simple. It wasn’t planned, it evolved, but it works. Territory.”
“Beg pardon?”
“A man claims a certain territory for his own, to support him and his family and retainers. He passes it on to one son. How he chooses the heir is his business.
Anybody who kills the owner;’ or drives him off, takes over that parcel of land.”
Ridenour actually registered a little shock, though he managed a smile, “Your society is less idyllic than some young City people told me,” he said.
Karlsarm laughed. “We do’all right—most of us. Can any civilization claim more? The landless don’t starve, remember. They’re taken on as servants, assistants, guards and the like. Or they become itinerant laborers, orentrepreneurs, or something. Let me remind.you, we don’t practice marriage. Nobody needs to go celibate. It’s only that few women care to have children by a landless man.” He paused. “Territorial battles aren’t common any more, either. The landholders have learned how to organize defenses. Besides, a decent man can count on help from his neighbors. So not many vagabonds try to reave an estate. Those that do, and succeed—well, haven’t they proven they’re especially fit to become fathers?”
The paths ranged aboie timberline. The land became boulder-strewn, chill and stark. Ridenour exclaimed, “But this road’s been blasted from the cliffside!”
“Why, of course,” said RowIan. “You didn’t think we’d chip it out by hand, did you?”
“But what do you use for such jobs?”
“Organics. Like nitroglycerine. We compound that—doesn’t take much apparatus, you know—and make dynamite from it. Some other explosives, and most fuels, we get from vegetables we’ve bred.” Rowlan tugged his gray beard and regarded the Terran. “If you want to make a side trip,” he offered, “I’ll show you a hydroelectric plant. You’ll call it ridiculously small, but it beams power to several mills and an instrument factory. We are not ignorant, John Ridenour. We adopt from your civilization what we can use. It simply doesn’t happen to be a particularly large amount.”
Even in this comparatively infertile country, food was plentiful. There were, no more fruits for the plucking, but roots and berries were almost as easily gotten in the low brush, and animals—albeit of different species from the lowlands—continued to arrive near camp for slaughter. Ridenour asked scholarly little Noach how that was
