The World Menders

entrance.

“What’s that?” Bran muttered.

“The ceiling must have collapsed,” he said.

“What about it?” Bran panted.

“Look!” Farrari exclaimed. He flashed the light first on one wall and then on the other, and it brought to life a procession of carved figures on either side, marching boldly toward the rubble-choked interior.

Bran gaped perplexedly and finally said, “So?”

“Did you know this was here?” “No,” Bran admitted, and his tone suggested that he wasn’t particularly concerned now that he did know. “What’s so special about carvings? You can find them all over Scorvif.”

“In caves?” Farrari asked.

Bran pawed his hair fretfully. “On buildings, mostly. Don’t think I ever saw any in caves. Does it matter?”

“These carvings matter. They’d make a lot of base specialists turn handsprings— the historians, the philologists, the archeologists, anyone interested in origins.”

Bran looked blankly at the carvings. “What’s so special about them?”

“They’re carvings of olz!” Farrari whispered awesomely. “Don’t you see what that means? The olz did have a civilization and a highly advanced culture. Their work is more primitive than that of the rascz, but at the same time it’s more vigorous, more alive and expressive. This also proves that the racsz have a tremendous artistry in their own right, but no one has ever doubted that. They began by imitating the people they conquered and eventually surpassed them in many respects. But the olz did have a civilization!”

“So how does that help them now?” Bran demanded. “They’re still slaves, and they still want to die.”

Farrari sat down on a rock and focused the light on the nearest carving. “Do they ever commit suicide?” he asked.

Bran dropped onto a nearby rock and flexed his legs. “Muscles killing me,” he moaned. “I’m too old. What were you saying? The olz? Commit suicide? Not that I ever heard of.”

“If they’re so intent on dying, why do they wait for those terrible beatings, or for a lingering death by starvation or disease? Why don’t they do the job themselves? Surely they could contrive a death that would be quick and painless.”

“I don’t know. They just don’t.”

“Don’t any of them commit suicide?”

Bran shook his head.

“Do you know of even one suicide, or have you ever heard of one?” Farrari persisted.

“No. They haven’t the spunk for it.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Branoff IV doesn’t have any of those civilized refinements that make for a quick and painless death. It takes gumption to commit suicide in a primitive society, and the olz don’t have any. How much would you have if for uncounted generations your race had been humiliated and tortured and murdered, men whipped to insensibility and death before their families for the most trivial offense, men having to stand by and watch their wives and children whipped. Any olz with gumption would have resisted and been killed when they were first enslaved. Those who could grovel the best survived, and now all the survivors have groveled for so long that they think groveling is all they’re fit for. I don’t blame them for wanting to die.”

“There must be more to it than that,” Farrari objected.

“Then why did they run off when I tried to keep them alive’?” Bran demanded.

“I don’t know. I’ve been wondering why they don’t steal food. They could, easily. What you’re saying is that they’ve lost all self-respect—lost it so totally that they prefer death to further humiliation.”

“Right.” Bran nodded emphatically and regarded Farrari with interest. “Self-respect. That’s it. IPR can’t give that to them because there’s nothing in the manual about self-respect. If it was a disease they had, the base doctor would concoct a serum and the agents would go around pouring it into the soup pots, and the first thing you’d know we’d have a nice revolution going. But there isn’t any medicine that can cure a lack of self-respect.”

“And yet—there are olz who want to live,” Farrari said thoughtfully. “I was with Liano Kurn when the plague started—she was a yilese and I was her kewl —and a dying ol came to tell us his village needed help. It was raining and he ran though clay so sticky that I had trouble walking in it and he climbed a slope steep I would have had a hard time climbing it in dry weather. He dropped dead. If he was so intent on dying, why would he make that heroic effort to get assistance?”

“I don’t know. I never met any olz like that. I’d hoped there were some, but I never met any.”

“So how do we go about restoring their self-respect?”

“They need a victory over the rascz. It wouldn’t be hard to arrange one, but the moment word got out that there’d been an uprising, soldiers would come and kill all the olz in the neighborhood. Self-respect wouldn’t be of much use to them if they died immediately after they got it.”

“It wouldn’t be an encouraging example for other olz, either,” Farrari said. “Have you thought of arming them?”

“What good is a weapon without the desire to use it?”

“Or the skill,” Farrari suggested. “The kru’s soldiers probably put in years of practice in throwing spears before they’re promoted to the cavalry.” He got to his feet, picked up a rock, and threw it toward the entrance. “Self-respect. It’s something to think about.”

“What are you doing’?” Bran demanded.

“I’m going to clear out this passage. I want to see the rest of the murals.”

“It’d take machines to move some of those rocks,” Bran said. Farrari heaved another rock toward the entrance. “Is it possible that the ol civilization used caves for dwellings?”

“It’s possible that you’ll bring the rest of the ceiling down on your head,” Bran growled. He left muttering to himself, and Farrari labored for hours before he finally gave up. Many of the huge slabs of rock would have required a machine to move them, and the rubble obviously extended far back into the cave.

On one side he managed to bare a few more meters of the mural, and he remained there looking at it until darkness fell and Bran returned to caution him about showing a light at night—base’s platforms sometimes flew near.

He had uncovered several of the older, massive buildings of Scorv, shown before the time when the city became crowded and the ponderous concepts of its architecture were diluted. Beyond them stood the Tower-of-a- Thousand-Eyes without the kru’s Life Temple surrounding it, and the kru’s portrait above its entrance was the portrait of an ol.

Farrari ate a belated supper in the blacked-out cave, and Bran, who had already eaten, joined him for a second meal. Farrari asked suddenly, “Isn’t there some way the olz could achieve a victory over the rascz without giving cause for calling out the militia?”

Bran chewed thoughtfully and swallowed before he answered. “Anything that mild wouldn’t be a victory,” he answered gloomily.

“Suppose the olz were to ridicule a durrl? He wouldn’t call out the soldiers because his olz were disrespectful. He’d be too embarrassed to admit it.”

Bran shook his head. “The olz would never be disrespectful to a durrl.

“I know two who would.”

A look of wild surmise transformed Bran’s hideous face, and just as abruptly he became despondent again. “What would it accomplish? He wouldn’t call out the soldiers, he’d just whip to death anyone who saw it.”