Moon Flower (25 page)

“
Glok
,” the vocalization in his head supplied. Shearer confirmed the option to use it. And
glok
it would henceforth be.

By the time they were ready to set off again, Ra Beta had set in the west, ushering in the start of what Shearer thought of as a normal day with one sun in the sky. Jerri and Uberg had gotten into a debate about Cyrenean social values and customs that sounded likely to continue. So leaving them to it, Shearer elected to ride up on the driver’s box with Chev.

It was not open in the style of coaches from a comparable period on Earth, but had its own shade roof, along with side and rear shutters that could be opened in fine weather or for better all-round view. The vehicle body was carried above a chassis and axles on a system of U-shaped springs resembling huge tuning forks, and the wheels had tires of a resilient tubular material that looked like power cable, but which Chev said was a toughened and processed variety of vine. He showed Shearer a length carried in the trunk for on-the-road repairs. It had a leathery outer skin and cellular interior composition somewhat like sponge.

Beyond the village, the road continued as little more than a track meandering to follow the contours across more rolling country of grassy hills and hollows. Scattered along the way, standing alone or in small groves, were plants ten to twenty feet high with wide stalks flaring at their tops into crowns of rounded yellow and green knobs, looking like giant broccoli. Birds of many kinds screeched and chattered among them, or circled in flocks above, and several breeds of apparently domesticated animals browsed in the lusher areas of grass, indifferent to the passing carriage. From time to time they encountered some that had wandered onto the road ahead, forcing Chev to yell them into moving, or else make cautious detours with wheels going up on the verges. And yes! — Shearer thumped the roof of the passenger compartment to draw the attention of the two inside. “Look... over there!” he called to them. A group of four or five that had central horns on their heads, although curved forward rather than straight. “Real unicorns!”

Except that the rest of them was decidedly more piglike than horselike.

Evassanie had shown Chev the wonders of her NIDA set, and after experimenting a little and being astonished at the results, he had become eager to try it out at greater length. His knowledge of English otherwise was very slight. When Shearer produced one, Chev donned it in the normal way and then put his hat back on top of it. They found that its operation was unimpaired.

“You know,” Shearer said, drinking in the openness and isolation, and drawing a long breath of the subtly scented air, “A lot of people back on Earth would give up all their machines and electronic toys to live somewhere like this if they had the choice. It would be their ideal.”

Chev snorted and laughed. “It’s easy to think things like that when you have a choice. When it’s what you have to do, maybe it’s not so ideal. Maybe they should be up here in the middle of a winter in the hard years. Ask the farmers back there that we just saw in Vigagawly. They know.”

“Some people on Earth think we have too many machines.”

Chev thought about it for a while, as if trying to see what the problem was. “Well, you can eat too much food too. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with food. You just stop when you’ve had enough. Don’t they know when they’ve got enough machines?”

“There are whole industries with huge numbers of people telling them all the time they need more,” Shearer replied. “They put a model picture inside your mind, of how you should live, and what it takes to live that way. Then, when you look at what you’ve got and compared it with what they’ve made you think you ought to have, you’re never satisfied or content. And that’s the idea.”

Chev shook his head and made a face that seemed to ask how that could happen. “So are the people who chase after these pictures like seeds drifting with the wind — blown this way or that way by something outside themselves? Have they nothing inside to give them direction?” He released a hand from the reins and jerked a thumb several times at his chest. “I am the only person who knows who I am and what I want to be. How can anyone else tell me?”

“So who are you?” Shearer asked, glad to get away from Terran politics. “Tell me then, Chev, what do you do?” It was a change to be asking the question of a Cyrenean.

“Me?” Chev laughed loudly. “I am different people at different times. I change as the seasons change. When the harder winters come, and Goruno has disappeared from the sky, I am a citizen of the town. It might be Revo. Or maybe it is somewhere else. It depends where I’ve ended up. That is when I put in my due.”

“How?” Shearer asked.

Chev let go the reins to close an imaginary pair of tongs, then held them with one hand while swinging a hammer with the other, at the same time making loud clanging and banging noises. “I tame the shiny metals that the rocks shed as tears, and shape them into beautiful things. Useful things... Beautiful useful things. What is the difference? Tools for craftsmen and farmers; gates for gardens, and pots for kitchens; hinges, bolts, handles, and chains; knives, reapers, axes, swords.... I can make you anything.”

“Sounds like a good way of keeping warm in winter,” Shearer agreed.

“Then in the long, mild seasons, when Goruno has reappeared near Henkyl again, and they begin the long dance that will take them away from each other to their own halves of the sky, or after the summer, when they are moving together again...”

“Where we are right now,” Shearer interjected.

“Yes. Most years I become a sailor and go to foreign lands. But this year I am a king’s agent. Having the Terrans here means that Vattorix and his counselors have more things to take care of and need extra help.” Chev shrugged. “So I do whatever is wanted. “Sail a boat. Drive a carriage. Deliver things to places....”

Smuggle disillusioned Terrans away, Shearer thought to himself. Perhaps not the most tactful of subjects to pursue. “So what about the summers?” he asked instead.

“Ah, when each sun has its own day. Those are the times of my life for relaxation, reflection, and the finer things.” Chev emitted another laugh. It seemed to be a huge joke that Shearer didn’t quite get. “Then we have the me of the many faces.” He turned sideways and doubled over in his seat to make an exaggerated bow, doffing his hat at the same time, then sat up and turned it over as if begging; he clapped a hand to his chest with a suddenly fierce expression, and then made an imbecilic face and tittered inanely.

“An actor,” Shearer realized suddenly. “It’s when you socialize and entertain others.”

“Not just an actor.” Chev burst into song, delivered as several bars of resonant baritone. The NIDA rendered them rhymelessly as:

“When the two kings rule high, and the night fades and dies,

The body seeks rest and cool water’s delights,

But the soul has its wine and the pretty girls-O”

He glanced sideways, mouthing a silent “Ow” that Shearer took to be the Cyrenean equivalent of a wink.

“Is that a Yocalan song?” Shearer asked.

“From an island called Quoselt — three days sailing west from Revo. They have some pretty girls there, all right.”

“Are their ways and customs like yours here — in Yocala?” Shearer asked.

“Oh, very similar,” Chev said. “We are the same culture.” A NIDA-injected comment cautioned Shearer that “race” might have been meant. “But they are close to us. In farther parts of the world — months of sailing, maybe — you find others that are different.”

“Don’t you ever end up fighting with each other?” Shearer asked. “Are there never wars?” The NIDA apparently had difficulty finding an association for the word, and presumably failed to activate any suitable concept in Chev visually. Shearer had to supplement it with an explanation. Chev seemed astounded and unable to see how it could achieve any worthwhile aim. “Whatever the problem is about, fighting over it will always end up costing everybody more than it would have taken to solve it,” he opined.

That was a sentiment with which Shearer agreed totally, and had been arguing — usually in vain — for a good part of his life. But he was still curious as to how they managed to avoid such things on Cyrene. “How do you stop both sides from plunging into it, each one thinking they’re going to gain?” he asked.

“They would both be wrong,” Chev said.

“True. But getting them to understand it up front is another matter. And even after they’ve learned, they’ll forget, and do the same thing all over again next time.”

“That’s how it is on Earth?” Chev queried.

“All the time. Our whole history.”

“Yes. So I have heard.”

“But it doesn’t happen like that here?”

Chev shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t happen that way on Cyrene.”

“How do you prevent it?”

“Cyreneans would never believe they could gain from something like that. They would know.”

Shearer sat back on the seat nonplussed. Just when he’d thought he was about to get a straight answer at last, once again there was no attempt at an explanation or reasoning to justify the assertion. Just this eternal, impervious Cyrenean falling back on gut-feel intuition again, which told him nothing.

He tried another angle. “You said that you make swords.”

“The best,” Chev agreed.

“We met a Cyrenean the day we landed at the base. A man called Korsofal. He lives south from the city somewhere.”

Chev shook his head. “I do not know him.”

“He was carrying one. It was hanging from his saddle. Why would he need it if you don’t resort to force?”

“I didn’t say that,” Chev replied. “I said that whole peoples don’t take to slaughtering each other and destroying each other’s lands in the ways you described. Because no good could come of it, and they would know.” He tossed up a hand, the reins draping over it loosely. “But some people will always exist who would live by taking for themselves what others create, and returning nothing. And who can only be restrained from doing so by force.”

“Criminals, you mean?”

“Yes, exactly. So it is a wise thing to have weapons.”

“For defense,” Shearer said. He didn’t have much argument with that. But to his surprise he saw that Chev was frowning as if not fully agreeing with him.

“It’s more than that,” Chev said at last. “If you have to use it, then its purpose has already been defeated.”

“You mean it’s a deterrent,” Shearer said, getting the point... he thought.

But Chev continued frowning. “More than even that. A deterrent would discourage a criminal from committing a criminal act. What I’m talking about is stopping the criminal from becoming a criminal in the first place.”

This time it was Shearer’s turn to frown. “I’m not sure what you mean. How could that work?”

“Well, I’ll put it this way. If it was in your nature to try and make your living that way, in which kind of a society would you be more likely to prosper if you were to act on it and become a robber, and in which kind would you be more likely to prosper and live longer if you decided on an honest job? One that had swords, or one that didn’t have swords?”

“Okay.” Shearer held up a hand and nodded. “I take your point. Its just that...” He hated being negative, but he had to shake his head. “Can you really expect to rely on the kind of people who become criminals to figure out something like that?”

“On Earth, maybe. Yes, from what I’ve heard that’s probably very true.”

“So why should it be any different here?” Shearer asked.

“Oh, here we’re not much good at figuring out anything,” Chev replied. “A Cyrenean would just
know
.”

Shearer gave up and returned to contemplating the view.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

As part of his specialty training for the Cyrene mission, Dolphin, currently operating as Jeff Lang, had undergone a speed course to familiarize him with the basics of the Yocalan language — as much as could be gleaned in the brief period of human contact, anyway. Even though the mission had been thrown together at short notice, he found it was sufficient to get by.

Dressed native-fashion in a hooded cloak, cord-tied tunic, and baggy pants with boots to add plausibility to his story, he sat at a table in an alcove near the serving counter of an inn near the waterfront on the northern side of the river dividing Revo town. The day had cooled after the fierce morning period, and people were beginning to leave and go about their business. A young waitress with fair hair tied in two long tails, and wearing a full, ankle-length skirt was bringing trays loaded with dishes of food through from a room at the rear. The brew in the earthenware mug in front of him tasted malty and nutty with a slightly sour edge — not bad, but on the warm side for his taste. His injection into Cyrenean society had happened a lot more suddenly than anyone had anticipated. It was too soon yet for him to have formed any firm impressions of it.

The innkeeper, whom Lang had spoken with earlier, got up from where he had been talking to three men at a bench beneath the window and came over. “Would they have ‘ad an animal with ’em?” he inquired, lowering himself to rest against one of the stools. “A black one with a long face. Makes a funny noise like a stuck door scrapin’.”

“That sounds like them,” Lang said, straightening up.

The innkeeper turned his head back toward the group he had just left. “‘E says it might be. ’Ow many was they, Orban?” He looked at Lang. “Two men an’ a girl, was it yer said?”

“Right.”

“Two men an’ a girl, we’re looking for,” the innkeeper called over.

“Well, I don’t know how many were in there...” one of the three answered, followed by something Lang didn’t catch.

“Come over ‘ere and tell ’em, then.” The innkeeper waved an arm. A thin, dark headed man in a blue smock and short black jacket, who was presumably Orban, got up and shuffled over. The innkeeper gestured at Lang. “‘E’s another one of ’em that’s wants out. ‘E was supposed to meet up with some others, ’e says, but ‘e missed ’em some’ow an’ thinks they might be in the town. Two men an’ a girl, ‘e says they are.”