The World Menders

thump. Farrari helped Bran push the platform through a dark opening, and then Bran led him along a stone floor and up a ramp, and there was a sound like a door sliding or scraping.

“Home,” Bran said, with a sigh of satisfaction. The door closed, and he touched on a light. “Now we can eat,” he said. “And sleep. And then we’ll talk.”

Farrari awoke with a jagged pattern of sunlight lying across his face. He pushed himself to a sitting position and looked about him. He was in a cave, and a crack admitted air and light and, at this particular moment, sunlight. His bed was a pile of straw covered with handwoven robes that would have been a prize exhibit’ in any Cultural Survey collection. Bran, in a cocoon-like bundle of similar robes, lay nearby, snoring gently.

Farrari got to his feet and padded to the opening. It looked onto a sheltered valley, small but peaceful and lovely. There were several tilled fields and a gently meandering stream. Beyond the fields was lush grass flecked with flowers; high on the surrounding slopes stood a magnificent growth of quarm trees. In the distance snowcapped mountains gleamed in the morning sun. In a loop of the stream stood the huts of a small o/ village; but there were no olz in the fields, and the village looked abandoned.

When finally he turned away he found Bran watching him curiously. “How do you like it?” Bran asked.

“It’s lovely,” Farrari said. “It’s too lovely. It doesn’t belong on this world. Nature made a mistake.” Bran smiled, his hideous face suffused with delight. “It’s mine. I found it when I was looking for a place to heal after they killed me. The only way to get here on the ground is through caves. From the air it looks as though there’s a canyon connecting with the outside, where the stream flows, but there isn’t. It goes underground.”

He scrambled to his feet and took a handlight. “Look—I got storerooms. Been taking stuff for years from the caches, a little at a time.” He led Farrari back into the cave: the walls were lined with shelves, and the shelves were crammed. There seemed to be tons of rations and a little of everything that an IPR agent could conceivably find use for. Obviously Bran was supplied for life.

“All this,” Farrari murmured, “plus a whole village of olz to work for you.”

Bran shook his head. “They work for me, but they won’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

Bran stared at him. “You didn’t figure it out,” he said resentfully.

“I haven’t figured anything out,” Farrari said.

“I thought you would, you being from CS. IPR people don’t know anything that isn’t in the manual, and there’s nothing in the manual about this. Look—I find this place and I figure it’ll support quite a few olz. I don’t need the grubby food they raise, I’d rather eat IPR rations and I have plenty of that, but I figure the olz would like living where they can have plenty to eat and no durrlz to torture them, so I dress like an aristocrat and take one family from each village so they won’t be missed and bring them here. I also tap the food stocks of all the durrlz around here so these olz of mine will have plenty to eat until they can make a crop and the best seed and roots for planting. My ol build themselves a village and put in the crops and while the crops are growing they start cutting quarm up on the slopes, and they have more to eat than they ever had in their lives and because this land has never been cultivated the crops come up like no crops they’ve ever seen and they can look forward to a warm winter with enough for everyone to eat. So what happens? They run away. One morning my village is empty. They’ve all gone back to where they came from.”

“Maybe they didn’t like your mixing olz from different villages.”

“Bah. Every now and then a whole village dies out during the winter, and that’s what the durrl does—he brings in one family from each of his other villages, and they stay put. So why did they run from my village?”

Farrari shook his head.

“At harvest I bring in another bunch, and they harvest the crops and store them and I think this bunch will be smart enough to see that it has a good thing for winter, plenty of quarm to burn and all that food without the kru taking one grain or one tuber. So what happens? They run off. They don’t take a scrap of food with them, and they go back to villages where there isn’t food for half the olz already there. Now can you figure it out?”

“No,” Farrari said. “Nothing about this world makes sense to me.”

“At first I couldn’t figure it out, either. During the winter I took the food around to the villages that needed it most, and at planting time I got me more olz and tried again. Same result. That happened for three years. Now I just bring in a few olz at planting and harvest time, and a few times in between for the cultivating, and when they’ve done the work I tell them to beat it. You can’t figure it out?”

“No.”

“Plenty to eat, they get to keep all the food they grow, no durrl to whip and starve them, no soldiers to use them for spear practice, all the wood they want to burn—and they run away. There’s only one explanation. They want to be whipped and starved and murdered. They want to die. They wouldn’t stay here because I was keeping them alive.”

“That’s unbelievable,” Farrari protested.

“Sure. That’s why IPR’ll never figure it out. There’s nothing in the manual to cover it. All this blah about democracy assumes that any intelligent being would want to govern himself if he had a chance. IPR can’t cope with intelligent beings that are so intent on dying that they don’t care what happens to them while they’re alive. Even if IPR did figure it out it couldn’t do anything because of its silly rules. But I figured it out, and you aren’t IPR so you don’t care any more about the rules than I do, and together we’re going to conquer Branoff IV.”

“How?” Farrari asked.

“We’re going to make the olz want to live.”

XIII

Bran gobbled a package of rations, yawned sleepily, flexed muscles that were painfully protesting his unwonted exertions, and returned to bed. Farrari strolled outside to explore the valley. He followed the stream from the foaming waterfall of its entry to the point where it abruptly plummeted into an underground void and disappeared. Sometime in the remote past a rockfall had blocked the end of the valley, probably creating a lake, and the water had honeycombed the valley walls with caves.

He looked into several of them, wondering if any gave egress from the valley; but he had brought no light with him, so he abandoned the caves and climbed a short distance up the opposite slope. There he stretched out on the soft grass, luxuriating in the warm sunshine and the fact that he could, for a moment, relax and be himself.

He dozed off, to wake with a start when a drifting cloud cut off the sun. Reluctantly he got to his feet and moved on. A short distance down the slope he happened onto another cave opening, and its arch looked so perfectly symmetrical that he went to investigate. The entranceway was as regularly shaped as the opening except for loose rock strewn about on the floor, and the soft stone walls had been lined with slabs of a type of Marble Farrari had not seen before.

Farrari was still pondering the significance of this when he made out, on the smooth, creamy surface of the marble, a carving in low relief. For a long, breathless moment he stared at it, and then he turned and ran.

Bran was still asleep. Farrari gave him a furious shake and panted: “The light! The handlight! Where is it?”

Bran pointed sleepily, and then, as Farrari snatched at it, straightened up and blurted, “What’s the matter?”

Farrari shook his head and dashed away. He was halfway across the valley when he heard a shout and saw Bran stumbling after him. He ran on, and when Bran finally came up to him Farrari was standing just inside the cave opening, despondently shining the light on rubble that completely filled the cave a short distance from its