Silence is Deadly (9 page)

Go at night and see if they need anyone,
her hands replied.

Do they often need anyone?

No.

Probably it was a universal law. There always were more unskilled applicants than there were jobs.
Is there any other work I could get?
he asked.

I’ll look,
she said.

She left, taking the mugs and wrappings with her, and she replaced the panel. Darzek waited until the sounds of her departure had faded, and then he eased the panel aside and cautiously looked out. He had heard no activity in or about the building, and he quickly discovered that it was deserted.

He climbed onto a crock and looked out of a high window. In his meanderings the night before he had lost his sense of direction. Now he saw how far he’d wandered from the center of the city. Only the Winged Beast and the top of the life pyramid were visible above the buildings to mark the site of the distant mart. His hiding place was one of a cluster of warehouses located along the shore. In the opposite direction he could see the city wall and rolling country beyond, marked off in small land holdings.

Several ships were tied up at the docks, and workers swarmed about them. Stevedores, carts, wagons, and a type of two-wheeled barrow were involved in the unloadings, but no part of the cargoes seemed destined for the empty bins or crocks in this warehouse. He continued to move from window to window, studying his surroundings and exercising his sore arm.

Now he regretted discarding the perfumer’s clothing. He didn’t know whether he dared move about freely and purchase necessities for himself as an unemployed sweep. He had a temporary refuge, but he was dependent on the child for food and drink. His position actually seemed worse than it had been the previous night. He paced about the enormous room, continuing to exercise his arm, and the day slowly waned to dusk.

Then the child returned. She said nothing at all to him, since her hands were full. She brought a sandwich for each of them, and she made a second trip up the rope ladder with the refilled mugs. This time they sat on the overturned bottom of a broken crock to eat. Again she kept her eyes on Darzek.

When they had finished, she gathered up the sandwich wrappings and the mugs and carefully wrapped them in a piece of sacking that she slung over her shoulder. Then her hands formed a word.
Come.

Once again Darzek decided he had nothing to lose. He followed her.

They descended a simple wood ladder in the far corner of the building and crawled through a window casement into a shed attached to the warehouse. She removed a piece of the shed’s wall, which provided an exit hidden behind a row of crocks. Darzek followed her through the narrow opening. She replaced the wall after them and hurried ahead to guide him.

Night was coming on quickly as they moved along the docks. The stevedores had finished their day’s work and left; candles glimmered in the ships’ cabins, and a few sailors were returning to their ships from forays on the mart, their arms laden with purchases.

They followed the docks to the far end of the harbor, where the shore curved sharply outward to form one of the two protective arms that almost enclosed the Bay of Northpor. There the haphazard array of warehouses gave way to majestic logs stored in carefully sited, crisscrossed piles. The storage area was checkerboarded with wagon paths, and they followed one of them. At the far side they came to a road that led directly to a gate in the city wall just beyond. Parked beside the road was a caravan, an enormous wagon with a wood building perched awkwardly on its box. Gathered around it, in the light of a cluster of flares, were the dregs of Northpor—the poor, the halt, the diseased. They were applying for work.

Darzek moved close enough to the flares so they could see to talk. He asked the child,
What sort of work?

Forest,
she answered.

Is it good work?

Her face brightened.
Yes. Good.

Did your father do that kind of work?

Once. Before he was hurt.

Obviously the scruffy applicants thought it good work. They seemed pathetically eager.

But the employers weren’t hiring just anyone. There were two doctors present, a purger and a manipulator, and both had to approve an applicant before the three males in dusky green work clothing would look at him. Those the doctors accepted were waved to a log that lay on the ground near the caravan. They had to pick it up and walk the length of the caravan and back with it. Few of the applicants got past the doctors, and few of those who did were able to pass the strength test.

Where is the forest?
Darzek asked the child.

She pointed southward. Then her hands answered,
A night and a day.

Riding?
Darzek asked.

She gazed at him blankly. Probably she had never thought of distances in terms of riding.

It was much too far. He had to get back to the city and start a systematic search for the Synthesis headquarters and get on with his mission.

She was watching him hopefully. She seemed as pathetically eager for him as the other applicants were for themselves. He said to her,
Thank you for your help, but I must find a job in the city.

Tears filled her eyes, and she turned away. Darzek gazed after her perplexedly, wondering why his lack of interest in a forest job could possibly matter to her. He turned away himself, intending to get back to the city and resume his search for the Synthesis headquarters. As he did so, light glowed softly in the dark interior of the caravan.

It glowed again, gained in intensity, remained half bright for a moment, and then slowly faded. One of the green-clad males in charge, evidently a scribe, came to the caravan door carrying a box.

Darzek moved in a wide circle and approached the caravan from the far side. There was a kind of running board along the wagon, and he stepped on it and pulled himself up. He edged along it to an uncurtained window and peered inside.

The interior was dark, and he could make out nothing at all.

He continued to cling to the side of the caravan. He had no notion of what he had seen, but he felt certain that it had no business happening on a world with a level three technology. His muscles soon protested his unnatural position, and his wounded arm began to throb furiously, but he held his position and waited.

Then the scribe returned. He went to the far end of the caravan, away from the door, and seated himself.

Abruptly the light glowed and brightened. It seemed blazing in that restricted space.

Darzek dropped to the ground before it faded. He almost landed on the child, who had trailed after him. He circled around to the other side of the caravan and took his place in line.

The child continued to follow him. Darzek turned to her.
What was your father’s name?

Lazk,
she answered.

Then my name is Lazk. What’s your name?

Sajjo.

They exchanged smiles.

Minutes later, Darzek had been hired. The officials, on the lookout for the healthiest specimens available, saw him at once and brought him forward out of turn. The doctors passed him with no more than a cursory thumping. The test log was heavy, but he had no difficulty with it. The scribe entered his name, Lazk, and handed him a wood chit. Another official administered a strangely worded oath of fealty to the Duke Lonorlk, who, Darzek gathered, owned the forest.

The scribe had one more question for him.
Family?
he asked.

The child was still trailing after Darzek, her face now wreathed with elation. Darzek suddenly understood: she had adopted him. The thought pleased him. She added to his protective coloration. No one would suspect the humble, hard-working head of a family; and if he could trust her—and he thought he could—she would be invaluable in teaching him about Kamm.

One child,
he said.

Other families were gathering. At midnight the hiring had been completed, and the successful candidates, with their wives and children, set out for the forest, following after the lumbering caravan and the half dozen nabrula that pulled it in tandem.

The road ran just outside the city wall. After a time it began to climb, and soon they were able to look over the vast expanse of the city, dark except for several distant blazes of torches where sweeps were at work. The lucky families moved along jubilantly in the screeching wake of the caravan’s ungreased wheels. Husbands and wives took turns carrying the smaller children. The older children cavorted about excitedly.

Darzek’s recently adopted daughter walked at his side with sober maturity, disdaining the antics of the other children. But whenever a faint gleam of light from torches carried ahead of the caravan touched her face, he read rapture there, and something else.

The something else disturbed him; he had never been worshiped before.

Then one of the nabrula slipped its harness, and the driver brought the tandem to a halt. In the sudden silence, Darzek heard, somewhere far off in the city, the electrifying shout of a word: “Primores!” Then another: “Synthesis!” And another: “Galaxy!”

He resisted the impulse to run toward the shouts. Then he had to restrain himself a second time, to keep from kicking himself.

On a world of the deaf, when he could safely let his colleagues know where he was at any time by shouting, only a half-wit would allow himself to get lost. Throughout Darzek’s agonizing search, he could have found the Synthesis headquarters at any time just by using his voice.

But now he had no need for his fellow agents. His position was secure, and he’d taken his own giant step toward solving at least one of the mysteries of Kamm.

Kom Rmmon had told him that Kamm’s crude technology had not even discovered electricity.

But in this caravan he followed there was, unmistakably, an electric light.

CHAPTER 7

Darzek began work with two substantial advantages over the other new employees. He was healthy, and he’d never been malnourished. On the first day out, he was appointed crew chief. On the fourth day, he became village leader. Two days later he was superintending workers from three villages, and it had been made clear to him that his future in the work force of the Duke Lonorlk was very bright indeed.

He quickly learned why a temporary forest job seemed so desirable to the dregs of the Northpor unemployed. It was the food. On their long night and day march they received regular hot meals, from waiting caravans, and when they finally staggered into their work camp another hot meal was waiting for them.

And they continued to be fed sumptuously. Wives and children, including Sajjo, gained weight and bloomed.

Each family was assigned a caravan on wheels, somewhat smaller than the office that had accompanied them from Northpor. These were arranged in work villages of twelve to fifteen units, and they were moved every few days so the work crews could live close to their cuts.

Their first work had nothing to do with forestry. As soon as they received their housing assignments, all families were ordered to wash their clothing, all the bedding the caravan contained, and themselves, and to scrub their caravans thoroughly. While the families started that chore, using hot water the duke’s foresters hauled in for them, the males were put to work digging latrines.

This concern for diet and sanitation astonished Darzek. Either the Duke Lonorlk had a social conscience far in advance of his time, or he had somehow grasped the fact that unhealthy, hungry laborers were unproductive laborers.

When they finished their cleaning chores, Darzek suggested a walk to Sajjo. His mind was on the caravan with the electric light, which had moved on into the forest with workers who were to be assigned to other villages.

Sajjo gazed at him with something remarkably akin to terror.
The Beasts!
her hands exclaimed.

Darzek looked about him at the peaceful forest. The maz trees that crowded the small clearing around their caravans were tall and stately, albeit strange-looking because the paper-like white bark gave them a nude look. Except when a wagon came through, the place was blissfully still. Their neighbors, whether awed by the imposing forest or uneasy away from their city cobblestones, remained close to their caravans. The few who were still in sight seemed to be waiting for their bedding to dry so they could retire. The others probably had gone to bed without bedding, which was a luxury few of them were familiar with. They were, all of them, utterly exhausted after the interminable walk.

Darzek was feeling exhausted himself. He would have liked to question Sajjo about the Beasts, but it was becoming too dark to talk. The luminous night creatures were streaking the forest with light, but they seemed to avoid the clearing.

Obviously both the electric light and the mystery about the Beasts would have to wait. To
bed, then,
Darzek’s hands announced. Their own bedding was still damp, so they went back to their caravan and retired without it.