Chapter 9

The guard inside the front entrance of the Foundation building jumped at the thunderous noise and reached for his gun. He dropped his hand sheepishly when he realized it was only a sneeze--though a gargantuan one. Brion came up, sniffling, huddling down into his coat. “I’m going out before I catch pneumonia,” he said. The guard saluted dumbly, and after checking his proximity detector screens he slipped out and the heavy portal thudded shut behind him. The street was still warm from the heat of the day and he sighed happily and opened his coat.

This was partly a reconnaissance trip--and partly a way of getting warmed up. There was little else he could do in the building; the staff had long since retired. He had slept for a half an hour, and had waked refreshed and ready to work. All of the reports he could understand had been read and reread until they were memorized. He could use the time now, while the rest of them were asleep, to get better acquainted with the main city of Dis.

As he walked the dark streets he realized how alien the Disan way of life was to everything he knew. This city--Hovedstad--literally meant “main place” in the native language. And that’s all it was. It was only the presence of the offworlders that made it into a city. Building after building, standing deserted, bore the names of mining companies, traders, space transporters. None of them was occupied now. Some still had lights burning, switched on by automatic apparatus, others were as dark as the Disan structures. There weren’t many of these native constructions and they seemed out of place among the rammed earth and prefab offworld buildings. Brion examined one that was dimly illuminated by the light on the corner of VEGAN SMELTERS, LTD.

It consisted of a single large room, resting right on the ground. There were no windows, and the whole thing appeared to have been constructed of some sort of woven material plastered with stone-hard mud. Nothing was blocking the door and he was thinking seriously of going in when he became aware that he was being followed.

It was only a slight noise, almost lost in the night. Normally it would never have been noticed, but tonight Brion was listening with his entire body. Someone was behind him, swallowed up in the pools of darkness. Brion shrank back against the wall. There was very little chance this could be anyone but a Disan. He had a sudden memory of Mervv’s severed head as it had been discovered outside the door.

Ihjel had helped him train his empathetic sense and he reached out with it. It was difficult working in the dark; he could be sure of nothing. Was he getting a reaction--or just wishing for one? Why did it have a ring of familiarity to it? A sudden idea struck him.

“Ulv,” he said, very softly. “This is Brion.” He crouched, ready for any attack.

“I know,” a voice said softly in the night. “Do not talk. Walk in the direction you were going before.”

Asking questions now would accomplish nothing. Brion turned instantly and did as he was bidden. The buildings grew further apart until he realized from the sand underfoot that he was back in the planet-wide desert. It could be a trap--he hadn’t recognized the voice behind the whisper--yet he had to take this chance. A darker shape appeared in the dark night near him, and a burning hot hand touched his arm lightly.

“I will walk ahead. Follow close behind me.” The words were louder and this time Brion recognized the voice.

Without waiting for an answer, Ulv turned and his dimly seen shape vanished into the darkness. Brion moved swiftly after him, until they walked side by side over the rolling hills of sand. The sand merged into hard-baked ground, became cracked and scarred with rock-filled gulleys. They followed a deepening gulley that grew into a good-sized ravine. When they turned an angle of the ravine Brion saw a weak yellow light coming from an opening in the hard dirt wall.

Ulv dropped on all fours and vanished through the shoulder-wide hole. Brion followed him, trying to ignore the growing tension and unease he felt. Crawling like this, head down, he was terribly vulnerable. He tried to shrug off the feeling, mentally blaming it on tense nerves.

The tunnel was short and opened into a larger chamber. A sudden scuffle of feet sounded at the same instant that a wave of empathetic hatred struck him. It took vital seconds to fight his way out of the trapping tunnel, to roll clear and bring his gun up. During those seconds he should have died. The Disan poised above him had the short-handled stone hammer raised to strike a skull-crushing blow.

Ulv was clutching the man’s wrist, fighting silently to keep the hammer from falling. Neither combatant said a word, the rasp of their calloused feet on the sand the only sound. Brion backed away from the struggling men, his gun centered on the stranger. The Disan followed him with burning eyes, and dropped the hammer as soon as it was obvious the attack had failed.

“Why did you bring him here?” he growled at Ulv. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

“He is here so we can listen to what he says, Gebk. He is the one I told you of, that I found in the desert.”

“We listen to what he says and then we kill him,” Gebk said with a mirthless grin. The remark wasn’t meant to be humorous, but was made in all seriousness. Brion recognized this and knew that there was no danger for the present moment. He slid the gun away, and for the first time looked around the chamber.

It was domed in shape and was still hot from the heat of the day. Ulv took off the length of cloth he had wrapped around his body against the chill, and refolded it as a kilt, strapping it on under his belt artifacts. He grunted something unintelligible and when a muttered answer came, Brion for the first time became aware of the woman and the child.

The two sat against the far wall, squatting on either side of a heap of fibrous plants. Both were nude, clothed only in the matted hair that fell below their shoulders. The belt of strange tools could not be classified as clothing. Even the child wore a tiny replica of her mother’s. Putting down a length of plant she had been chewing, the woman shuffled over to the tiny fire that illuminated the room. A clay pot stood over it, and from this she ladled three bowls of food for the men. It smelled atrocious, and Brion tried not to taste or smell the sickening mixture while he ate it. He used his fingers, as did the other men, and did not talk while he ate. There was no way to tell if the silence was ritual or habit. It gave him a chance for a closer look at the Disan way of living.

The cave was obviously hand-made; tool marks could be clearly seen in the hard clay of the walls, except in the portion opposite the entrance. This was covered with a network of roots, rising out of the floor and vanishing into the roof of earth above. Perhaps this was the reason for the cave’s existence. The thin roots had been carefully twisted and plaited together until they formed a single swollen root in the center, as thick as a man’s arm. From this hung four of the vaedes: Ulv had placed his there before he sat down. The teeth must have instantly sunk in, for it hung unsupported--another link in the Disan life cycle. This appeared to be the source of the vaede’s water that nourished the people.

Brion was aware of eyes upon him and turned and smiled at the little girl. She couldn’t have been over six years old, but she was already a Disan in every way. She neither returned his smile nor changed her expression, unchildlike in its stolidity. Her hands and jaw never stopped as she worked on the lengths of fibrous plant her mother had placed before her. The child split them with a small tool and removed a pod of some kind. This was peeled--partially by scraping with a different tool, and partially by working between her teeth. It took long minutes to remove the tough rind; the results seemed scarcely worth it. A tiny wriggling object was finally disclosed which the girl instantly swallowed. She then began working on the next pod.

Ulv put down his clay bowl and belched. “I brought you to the city as I told you I would,” he said. “Have you done as you said you would?”

“What did he promise?” Gebk asked.

“That he would stop the war. Have you stopped it?”

“I am trying to stop it,” Brion said. “But it is not that easy. I’ll need some help. It is your life that needs saving--yours and your families’. If you would help me--”

“What is the truth?” Ulv broke in savagely. “All I hear is difference, and there is no longer any way to tell truth. For as long as always we have done as the magter say. We bring them food and they give us the metal and sometimes water when we need it. As long as we do as they ask they do not kill us. They live the wrong way, but I have had bronze from them for my tools. They have told us that they are getting a world for us from the sky people, and that is good.”

“It has always been known that the sky people are evil in every way, and only good can come from killing them,” Gebk said.

Brion stared back at the two Disans and their obvious hatred. “Then why didn’t you kill me, Ulv?” he asked. “That first time in the desert, or tonight when you stopped Gebk?”

“I could have. But there was something more important. What is the truth? Can we believe as we have always done? Or should we listen to this?”

He threw a small sheet of plastic to Brion, no bigger than the palm of his hand. A metal button was fastened to one corner of the wafer, and a simple drawing was imbedded in the wafer. Brion held it to the light and saw a picture of a man’s hand squeezing the button between thumb and forefinger. It was a subminiaturized playback; mechanical pressure on the case provided enough current to play the recorded message. The plastic sheet vibrated, acting as a loudspeaker.

Though the voice was thin and scratchy, the words were clearly audible. It was an appeal for the Disan people not to listen to the magter. It explained that the magter had started a war that could have only one ending--the destruction of Dis. Only if the magter were thrown down and their weapons discovered could there be any hope.

“Are these words true?” Ulv asked.

“Yes,” Brion said.

“They are perhaps true,” Gebk said, “but there is nothing that we can do. I was with my brother when these word-things fell out of the sky and he listened to one and took it to the magter to ask them. They killed him, as he should have known they would do. The magter kill us if they know we listen to the words.”

“And the words tell us we will die if we listen to the magter!” Ulv shouted, his voice cracking. Not with fear, but with frustration at the attempt to reconcile two opposite points of view. Up until this time his world had consisted of black and white values, with very few shadings of difference in between.

“There are things you can do that will stop the war without hurting yourself or the magter,” Brion said, searching for a way to enlist their aid.

“Tell us,” Ulv grunted.

“There would be no war if the magter could be contacted, made to listen to reason. They are killing you all. You could tell me how to talk to the magter, how I could understand them--”