The World Menders

assaulting a durrl! Why, that’s… that’s—”

“Sacrilege,” Liano murmured. “Cedd, this is Orson Ojorn.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Farrari demanded angrily. “Let him use that damned whip on her?”

“Yes,” Ojorn snapped. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do. When you have an ol role you behave exactly like an ol—or you get recalled and buried in an office job on a nicely-controlled world where your impulsiveness isn’t likely to embarrass anyone. And that’s what’ll happen to you as soon as I report. Assaulting a durrl!” He waved his arms wildly. “You could have blown the planet and got the entire team demoted five grades. It’s a good thing Peter sent me to observe you two.”

“What’s going to happen?” Farrari asked.

“You’ll be recalled. Expect a contact as soon as it’s dark.”

“We’re already expecting a contact. I meant—what’ll the durrl do?”

“Nothing. I’ve instilled in him a lifelong respect for yilescz. If I hadn’t been here —”

“We have work to do, Orson,” Liano said. “The ol are dying.”

“I know. Go back to work, then. I’ll tell base to send you another kewl.”

He rode away, and Farrari and Liano walked back toward the village.

“I thought there weren’t any agents among the aristocrats,” Farrari protested.

“There aren’t,” Liano said, “but there are a few aristocrat agents. They can get away with it as long as they stay away from the real aristocrats. Sometimes they can be very useful.”

“Obviously. Could you understand what he said to the durrl?”

“He said enough to frighten him badly. He reminded him that a yilesc has the protection of the kru and threatened to hold him responsible for the sickness if we were interfered with.”

“I see.”

“He would have whipped me,” Liano said softly.

“He certainly gave every indication of it. Why, by the way?”

“He’d already started. He would have whipped me.”

Abruptly she lapsed into a mood he had not seen for months; her manner was subdued; her gaze directed absently at nothing on the horizon. And when they returned to work she performed her tasks mechanically and spoke not at all. Farrari did not disturb her. His leg was still bleeding and he could not bandage it—no ol would wear a bandage. It throbbed painfully, but he knew that it was not even a sample of what a real beating would be like.

And Liano, he feared, had her own vivid memories of that.

He worked at her side, wondering bitterly if a sick ol was any more susceptible to culture than a well one, because on this, his last day in the field, the only olz available for him to work on were dying.

But when Dr. Garnt came that night Farrari’s recall was not even mentioned.

There was sickness in the next village. And the next. For days they labored, moving from village to village, covering as much territory as they could but not nearly enough, fanning the feeble sparks of life that they found in the foul, damp coldness of the huts. Base, in a frantic attempt to halt the spread of the strange virus, sent all of its ol agents into the area and everyone else who could by any stretch of the imagination pass as an ol. The latter were less than adequately trained, but the durrl never reappeared and the olz were too sick to care whether their nurses walked properly.

In every village the piles of dead grew daily. Soon there were more dead olz than there were live olz being cared for. When Farrari suggested that they dig graves, Liano solemnly shook her head. A village’s dead were its own business.

“Come warm weather, these villages aren’t going to be pleasant places,” Farrari objected.

“And what if there’s no one alive in the village to take care of them?”

“Then the neighboring villages will do it.”

Farrari grumbled for days before abandoning the argument.

The unseasonably cold, damp weather passed, finally, and one of the durrl’s assistants brought a generous ration of food to each village. Farrari was touched by this humanitarian gesture until Liano explained that every durrl held back a reserve of food for spring, just in case the olz needed it to give them sufficient strength for the spring planting.

“Just in case they need it!” Farrari exclaimed.

“This year they’ll have more to eat than usual,” Liano observed soberly. “There are so few…”

The sick olz soaked up sunshine, ate, became stronger. The crisis had passed, but in the villages afflicted by the disease, only one ol in six survived.

Farrari and Liano left, as usual, without a murmur of farewell. That night a platform met them in the wasteland and whisked them and their narmpf and cart to base for a rest.

Coordinator Paul greeted them, shook their hands warmly, and said, “Well, Farrari, what progress in disseminating culture?”

“Culture?” Farrari echoed bitterly. “We couldn’t even keep them alive!”

The coordinator nodded. “Very well put. Before the olz can concern themselves with things like democracy and culture, they have to achieve survival.”

Later Peter Jorrul came to Farrari’s workroom and greeted him with such evident embarrassment that Farrari opened the conversation by saying resignedly, “I suppose my career as an ol is finished.”

Jorrul nodded. “No one regrets that more than I do. You did well enough to astonish a lot of people, including myself, and for a time we thought we’d found a natural agent in the most unlikely place imaginable. But—” he smiled tiredly—“you have a fatal weakness.”

“I can’t think like an ol.”

“Right. I’m extremely glad that you can’t, since no harm was done. You saved Liano and quite probably yourself, and you enabled us to learn something. In this business one survives by learning—if one learns quickly enough to survive.”

“What did you learn? That CS men can’t think like olz?”

Jorrul said ruefully, “At least we could have been excused for not knowing that. ‘Learned’ isn’t the right word—you brought to our attention something we should have observed years ago: the yilescz vanish at the end of the harvest season and have nothing to do with the olz until spring planting. Why this is so we have no idea. We possibly would have deduced this earlier if Liano had been able to tell us what happened when her husband was killed. We should have figured it out anyway, but we didn’t.”

“That happened at the same time of year?”

Jorrul nodded. “A spring of starvation. A durrl found her and her husband in an ol village looking after the sick and dying, and he used a zrilm whip on them.” He paused. “If it’s any consolation to you, we think Liano’s husband also had difficulty in thinking like an ol. He probably interfered, as you did, when the durrl attacked Liano. Then he submitted to a beating and was killed, and because that satisfied the durrl’s anger somewhat, Liano survived.”

“Do the durrlz want the olz to die?” Farrari demanded.

“The contrary. The only conceivable explanation is that the durrl thought you were killing olz, not keeping them alive. The science of medicine doesn’t exist on this planet, and neither the olz nor the rascz have any concept of the healing process. From spring planting through the fall harvest the durrlz don’t seem to care what the