Asimov's Science Fiction 10-11/2001 Read online

  He paused, hoping for a reply.

  Nothing. Nothing.

  “They have killed everyone in Getfen House, and in other Houses too. I have been to Ludbrek House, which is south of the Getfen lands, and everything is in ruins there. An old serf told me that all the Ludbreks are dead.—Do you hear me, Father?”

  Useless pink glow. Sputtering hissing sound.

  “I want to tell you, Father, that I am all right. I hurt my leg in the forest but it's healing nicely now, and the Indigenes are looking after me. I'm staying in the first Indigene village due south of the Getfens. When my leg is better, I'm going to start out for home again, and I hope to see you very soon. Please try to reply to me. Please keep trying every day.”

  The thought came to him then that what he had just said could have been very rash, that perhaps the combinant system of Manza was in rebel hands, in which case they might have intercepted his call and possibly could trace it to this very village. In that case he could very well have doomed himself just now.

  That was a chilling thought. It was becoming a bad habit of his, he saw, to speak without fully thinking through all consequences of his words. But, once again, there was no way he could unsay what he had just said. And maybe this enterprise of his, this immense trek across Manza, was doomed to end in failure sooner or later anyway, in which case what difference did it make that he might have just called the rebels down upon himself ? At least there was a chance that the call would go through to Keilloran, that his words would reach his father and provide him with some comfort. The message might even set in motion the forces of rescue. It was a risk worth taking, he decided.

  He undid his bandages and examined his leg. It still looked bad. The swelling had gone down, and the bruises had diminished considerably, the angry zones of purplish-black now a milder mottling of brownish-yellow. But when he sat on the edge of his bed of furs and swung the leg carefully back and forth, his knee made a disagreeable little clicking sound and hot billows of pain went shooting along his thigh. Perhaps there was no permanent damage, but he was scarcely in shape for a long trek on his own yet.

  Joseph asked for a basin of water and washed the leg thoroughly. Ulvas provided him with a fresh length of cloth so that he could bandage it again.

  For the next few days they left him largely to his own devices. The faithful Ulvas brought him food regularly, but he had no other visitors. Now and then village children gathered in the hall outside the open door of his room and studied him intently, as though he were some museum exhibit or perhaps a sideshow freak. They never said a word. There was a flinty steadfast intensity to their little slitted eyes. When Joseph tried to speak with them, they turned and ran.

  He resumed his studies, finally, after the long interruption, calling up his geography text and searching it for information about the climate and landscape of the continent of Manza, and then going into his history book to read once again the account of the Conquest. It was important to him now to understand why the Folk had suddenly turned with such violence against their overlords, after so many centuries of quiescent acceptance of Master rule.

  But the textbook offered him no real guidance. All it contained was the traditional account, telling how the Folk had come to Homeworld in the early days of the colonization of the worlds of space and taken up a simple life of farming, which had degenerated after a couple of centuries into a bare subsistence existence because they were a dull, backward people who lacked the technical skills to exploit the soil and water of their adopted world properly. At least they were intelligent enough to understand that they needed help, though, and after a time they had invited people of the Master stock here to show them how to do things better, just a few Masters at first, but those had summoned others, and then, as the steadily increasing Masters began to explain to the Folk that there could be no real prosperity here unless the Folk allowed the Masters to take control of the means of production and put everything on a properly businesslike basis, a couple of hotheaded leaders appeared among the Folk and resistance broke out against Master influence, which led to the brief, bloody war known as the Conquest. That was the only instance in all of Homeworld's history, said the textbook, of friction between Folk and Masters. Once it was over the relationship between the two peoples settled into a stable and harmonious rhythm, each group understanding its place and playing its proper role in the life of the planet, and that was how things had remained for a very long time. Until, in fact, the outbreak of the current uprising.

  Joseph understood why a truly dynamic, ambitious race would object to being conquered that way. He could not imagine the Masters, say, ever accepting the rule of invaders from space: they would fight on and on until all Homeworld was stained with blood, as it was said had happened in the time of the empires of Old Earth. But the Folk were in no way dynamic or ambitious. Before the Masters came, they had been slipping back into an almost prehistoric kind of life here. Under the rule of the Masters they were far more prosperous than they could ever have become on their own. And it was not as though they were slaves, after all. They had full rights and privileges. No one forced them to do anything. It was to their great benefit, as well as the Masters', for them to perform the tasks that were allotted them in the farms and factories. Master and Folk worked together for the common good: Joseph had heard his father say that a thousand times. He believed it. Every Master did. So far as Joseph knew, the Folk believed it too.

  Because the system had always seemed to work so well, Joseph had never had any reason to look upon his own people as oppressors, or on the Folk as victims of aggression. Now, though, the system was not working at all. Joseph wished he could discuss the recent events in Manza with Balbus. Were the rebels mere brutal killers, or could there be some substance to their resentments? Joseph could see no justification, ever, for killing and burning, but from the rebels’ point of view those things might well have seemed necessary. He did not know. He had lived too sheltered a life; he had never had occasion to question any of its basic assumptions. But now, suddenly, everything was called into question. Everything. He was too young and inexperienced to wrestle with these problems on his own. He needed someone older, someone with more perspective, with whom to discuss them. Someone like Balbus, yes. But Balbus was gone.

  Unexpectedly Joseph found himself drifting, a few days later, into a series of conversations with the Ardardin that reminded him of his discussions with his late tutor. The Ardardin had taken to visiting him often in the afternoons. Now that Joseph had taken up residence in the village once more, his services as a healer were needed again, and the Ardardin would come to him and conduct him to the village infirmary, where some villager with a running sore, or a throbbing pain in his head, or a mysterious swelling on his thigh, would be waiting for Joseph to cure him.

  Joseph did not even try to struggle against his unwanted role as a healer now. It no longer embarrassed him to be engaging in such pretense. If that was the role they wanted him to play, why, he would play it as well as he could, and do it with a straight face. For one thing, his ministrations often seemed to bring about cures, even though he had only the most rudimentary of medical technique and no real notion of how to cope with most of the ailments that were presented to him. These Indigenes appeared to be a suggestible people. They had such faith in his skills that a mere laying on of hands, a mere murmuring of words, frequently did the job. He became accustomed to seeing such inexplicable things happen. That did not instill in him any belief in his own magical powers, only an awareness that faith could sometimes work miracles regardless of the cynicism of the miracle-worker. And his magical cures justified his presence among them in his own eyes. He was eating these people's food and taking up space in their village as he hobbled around waiting for his leg to heal. The least he could do for them was to give them succor for their ills, so long as they felt that such succor was within his power to give. What he had to watch out for was beginning to believe in the reality of his own powers.

&nbs
p; Another thing that troubled him occasionally was the possibility that his medical services were becoming of such value to the villagers that they would keep him among them even after he was strong enough to get on his way. They had no reason to care whether he ever returned to his home or not, and every reason to want to maintain him in their midst forever.

  That was not a problem he needed to deal with now. Meanwhile he was making himself of use here; he was performing a worthwhile function, and that was no trivial thing. The whole purpose of this trip to the northern continent had been to prepare him for the tasks that someday would be his as Master of House Keilloran, and, though his father certainly had not ever imagined that ministering to the medical needs of a village of Indigenes would be part of that preparation, it was clear enough to Joseph that that was something entirely appropriate for a Master-in-the-making to undertake. He would not shirk his responsibilities here. Especially not for such an unworthy reason. The Indigenes would let him go, he was sure, when the time came.

  The more doctoring he did, the more adventuresome he became about the things he would try that could be regarded by him as genuine medicine, and not just mere faith-healing. Joseph did not feel ready to perform any kind of major surgery, and did not ever think he would be; but, using the few simple tools he found in his utility case, he started stitching up minor wounds, now, and lancing infections, and pulling decayed teeth. One thing he feared was that they would ask him to deliver a child, a task for which he lacked even the most basic knowledge. But they never did. Whatever process it was by which these people brought their young into the world continued to be a mystery to him.

  He began to learn something about Indigene herbal medicine, also, and used it to supplement the kind of work he was already doing. It puzzled him that the Indigenes should have developed the use of such a wide range of drugs and potions without also having managed to invent even the simplest of mechanical medical techniques. They could not do surgery, they could not suture a wound, they could not set a fracture. But they had succeeded in finding natural medicines capable of reducing fever, of easing pain, of unblocking a jammed digestive tract, and much more of that sort. Their ignorance of the mechanical side of medicine, amounting almost to indifference, was one more example, Joseph thought, of their alien nature. They are simply not like us. Not just their bodies are different, but their minds.

  His instructor in the use of Indigene herbs was a certain Thiyu, the village's master in this art. Joseph never found out whether Thiyu was male or female, but it was certain, at least, that Thiyu was old. You could see that in the faded tone of Thiyu's bronze skin, from which all the orange highlights had disappeared, and from the slack, puffy look of Thiyu's throat-pouch, which seemed to have lost the capacity to inflate. And Thiyu's voice was thin and frayed, like a delicate cord just at the verge of snapping in two.

  In Thiyu's hut behind the infirmary were a hundred different identical-looking ceramic jars, all of them unmarked, each containing a different powder or juice that Thiyu had extracted from some native plant. How the Indigene knew what drug was contained in which jar was something Joseph never understood. He would describe to Thiyu the case he was currently working on, and Thiyu would go to the collection of jars and locate an appropriate medicine for him, and that was that.

  Aware that knowledge of these drugs was valuable, Joseph made a point of asking Thiyu the name of each one used, and its properties, and a description of the plant from which it was derived. He carefully wrote all these things down. Bringing this information to his fellow Masters, if ever he returned to his own people again, would be part of the service that a Master must render to the world. Had any Master ever bothered, he wondered, to study Indigene medicine before?

  He and Thiyu never spoke of anything but herbs and potions, and that only in the briefest possible terms. There was no conversation between them. Nor was there with any of the others, not even Ulvas. The Ardardin was the only Indigene in the village with whom Joseph had anything like a friendship. After Joseph had done his day's work in the infirmary the Ardardin often would accompany him back to his room, and gradually it fell into the habit of remaining for a while to talk with him.

  The themes were wide-ranging, though always superficial. They would speak of Helikis, a place about which the Ardardin seemed to know almost nothing, or about the problems the Ardardin's people had had this summer with their crops, or the work Joseph was doing in the infirmary, or the improving condition of his leg, or the weather, or the sighting of some rarely seen wild animal in the vicinity of the village, but never about anything that had to do with Indigene-human relationships, or the civil war now going on between Masters and Folk. The Ardardin set the pace, and Joseph very swiftly saw which kinds of topics were appropriate and which were out of bounds.

  The Ardardin seemed to enjoy these talks, to get definite pleasure from them, as though it had long been starved for intelligent company in this village before Joseph's arrival. Joseph was surprised to find that they were talking as equals, in a sense, sitting face to face and exchanging ideas and information on a one-to-one basis, although he was only a half-grown fugitive boy and the Ardardin was a person of stature and authority, the leader of the village. But maybe the Ardardin did not realize how young Joseph really was. Of course, Joseph was a Master, a person of rank among his own people, the heir to a great estate somewhere far away. But there was no reason why the Ardardin would be impressed by that. Was it that he was functioning as the tribal doctor? Maybe. More likely, though, the Ardardin was simply extending to him the courtesy that it felt one adult intelligent creature owed another. There was, at any rate, a certain sense of equality for Joseph in their talks. He found it flattering. No one had ever spoken to Joseph in that way before. He took it as a high compliment.

  Then the nature of his conversations with the Ardardin began to change. It was an almost imperceptible transformation. Joseph could not say how the change began, nor why the talks now became fixed on a single daily subject, which was the religious beliefs of the Indigenes and the light that those beliefs cast on the ultimate destiny of all the creatures of Homeworld. The result was a distinct alteration of the parity of the meetings. Now, once more, Joseph was back in the familiar role of the student listening to the master. Though the Ardardin seemed to be treating him as a scholar seeking information, not as a novice stumbling about in the darkness of his own ignorance, Joseph had no illusions about the modification of their relationship.

  Perhaps it was a reference that the Ardardin made one afternoon to “the visible sky” and “the real sky” that had started it.

  “But the visible sky is the real sky,” said Joseph, mystified. “Is that not so?”

  “Ah,” said the Ardardin. “The sky that we see is a trivial simple thing. What has true meaning is the sky beyond it, the sky of the gods, the celestial sky.”

  Joseph had problems in following this. He was fluent enough in Indigene, but the abstract concepts that the Ardardin was dealing in now involved him in a lot of new terminology, ideas that he had never had to deal with before, and as the discussion unfolded he had to ask for frequent clarifications. Bit by bit he grasped the distinction that the Ardardin was making: the universe of visible phenomena on the one hand, and the much more significant universe of celestial forces, where the gods dwelled, on the other. It was the gods who dwelled in the real sky, the one that could not be seen by mortal eyes, but which generated the power by which the universe was held together.

  That the Indigenes should have gods came as no surprise to Joseph. All peoples had gods of some sort. But he knew nothing whatever about theirs. No texts of Indigene mythology had ever come his way. In Keilloran there were Indigenes living all around; you constantly encountered them; and yet, Joseph saw now, they were so much taken for granted as part of the landscape that he had never paid any real attention to them, other than to learn the language, which was something that every Master was required to do. His father collected their artifact
s, yes. But you could fill entire storehouses with pots and sculptures and weavings and still not know anything about a people's soul. And though Balbus had said that Martin had studied Indigene philosophy as well, he had never shared a syllable of his findings with his son.

  Joseph strained to penetrate the mysteries that the Ardardin was expounding now, wondering whether these were the things that his father supposedly had studied. Perhaps not. Perhaps they had never been shared with a person of human blood before.

  The world that surrounds us, the Ardardin said, its mountains and seas and rivers and forests, its cities and fields, its every tangible aspect, is the terrestrial counterpart of the celestial world in the sky. That world is the world of the gods, the true world, of which the world of living beings was a mere pallid imitation. Everything we see about us, said the Ardardin, represents the crude attempts of mortal beings to replicate the gods’ own primordial act of creating their own world.

  “Do you follow?” the Ardardin said.

  “Not exactly,” said Joseph.

  The Ardardin did not appear troubled by that. It went on speaking of things that were completely new to Joseph, the sacred mountain at the center of the world where the visible world and the invisible one come together, the axis upon which all things spin, the place where mundane time and mythical time meet, which is the navel of the world. The distinction between the time-scheme of living things and the time-scheme of the gods, worldly time and godly time, was obviously very important to the Indigenes. The Ardardin made it seem as though the world of ordinary phenomena was a mere film, an overlay, a stencil, a shallow and trivial thing although linked by the most powerful bonds to the divine world where fundamental reality dwelled.

  All this was fascinating in its way, though Joseph's mind did not ordinarily tend in these metaphysical directions. There was a certain strange beauty to it, the way a mathematical theorem has great beauty even if you could not see any way of putting it to practical use. After each conversation with the Ardardin he would dictate notes into his recorder, setting down all that he had been told while it was still fresh in his mind. By so doing he reinforced in his own mind the belief that he would somehow get out of Manza alive, that he would return to Helikis and share with others the remarkable fund of alien knowledge that he had brought back with him.