Rork! (15 page)

And the rorks and the rorks’ men said, “We will come there in peace. And in peace we will talk of this.”

It was all very simple.

Tan Carlo Harb, calmly overriding the obsessed objections of the Motor Aide, Starchy Manton, had decided that they would go South in the Station’s single aerospacecraft, rather than by slow skimmer or slower boat. It was to discuss plans for the trip that Ran came to the Residence one evening, close to the appointed fiftieth day. He found him pale and very disturbed.

“Who would have thought it?” he flung the rhetorical question at Lomar. “Who could have predicted it? It’s bad, it’s bad.”

It
was
bad. It was Flinders. The clans hostile to him had made their arms, pikes and matchlocks, prepared their powder, and marched out upon him. Flinders and his hard core allies were obliging enough to meet them en route, and in the battle had suffered a defeat. So far, so good. But Flinders, not intending to remain defeated, had quickly decided on a strategy. His forces would scatter, thus obliging his enemies to scatter as well if they would pursue them. And he and his clan and the clans allied with them would rendezvous — a desperate measure — in the far, far south of Rorkland.

The place he picked was Tiggy’s Hill.

He was there, hiding out with his fighting men, concealed upon the crown, when the first contingent of the rork-folk arrived, casually ahead of the set date for the powwow. It would probably have meant no difference to Flinders if he knew, but he did not know and he did not care. He attacked the delegation. It was not a battle but a massacre. Almost none escaped, rorks and rorkmen. And among the fallen was Tun.

“Oh, God!” cried Ran, in agony. “What they must think of me!” Once again his plans had come tumbling down. Not only, not merely, was his personal success destroyed, not only did the future existence of mankind on Pia 2 receive a probably irrevocable setback. Tun was dead, who had — obliged by no claim known to Lomar — helped Lomar and Norna to live. Tun of the curious smile, naked Tun, Tun strong and alien. Tun dead. And with his death, dead, too, seemingly the chance at what might have been the greatest breakthrough in human history between human and nonhuman.

Lindel was in his room, it seemed that she was always in his room now, talking eagerly of his plans and of how well they were sure to be received by the Guild Directorate, singing to him, soothing him, making love to him. “Where are you going?” she cried, now. “What’s wrong?
Ranny!
”

She screamed at him, told him he was mad, perverse, perverted to think, even to think, of going back into Rorkland now, after what had happened. He would be able to think of something else, she begged. Something sane, safe. “Do you think you can get them to listen to you now? Are you going to be some kind of martyr? Do you want to die? What is it — a sacrifice of atonement?”

“If it has to be.”

She held onto him, he put her away, she struggled to pursue; he closed the door on her and locked it.

Last Ridge again. He set the skimmer’s controls on automatic return, prepared to climb in. A woman’s voice. Ranny. Ranny. Lindel again. Got out. Hurry up, get away.

The remembered, twice-reflected-on voice, broke into his preoccupation. It was not Lindel at all, it was Norna. He turned, calling, “Goodbye, Norna,” stepped into the skimmer. Then she had her hand on it. A Tock was with her, cleaner than average, melancholy face, long arms. Her lover, probably. “Goodbye, Norna.”

She did not remove her hand, turned to the other. “Goodbye, Dukie,” she said.

“No, girl,” he said, sadly. Pleadingly. Stroked her arms, her breasts, in free Tocky fashion. “No….”

“Norna, you can’t come.”

“Why not?”

Quickly, briefly, he told where he was bound, and why. She said, “I wents there with you once, risks and all. I’ll go again.”

“No — ”

“Won’t they likelier think you peaceful, they sees me, too?”

He had thought they might, and on that, let her come. But they had not, not at all. The skimmer had returned on automatic, and down into Rorkland on foot they went, Ran and Norna. He scarcely recollected how long it had taken to find the first ones, but if her presence made a difference, it made not much difference.

“Liar!”

“Liar!”

The men menaced him with their clubs. The yellow masked ones rorked at him, growling and clicking and thundering. They would listen to no explanation, they wanted no more of the sight or sound of him. “Come in peace and in peace talk?” Blood and bodies on the slope of Tiggy’s Hill. Liar!
Liar!
Another trick, another scheme.

They gave him and Norna until sundown. That long, no longer.

Watchful, silent, they saw the two depart, defeated. The redwing was growing flush throughout the long glades, but Ran had no eyes for it. He saw it without seeing it, between the great russet leaves and his eyes was the face of Tun, blood but emphasizing his enigmatic smile.

He scarcely understood the pad, pad of running feet, or why Norna screamed, or where the rip pack had come from so suddenly. They were thin and gaunt and they whined with hunger and excitement and they seemed to come from everywhere. He did stop, for they were in front of him; he did put one arm around Norna, raised the other in impotent defense. But mostly he was numb, helpless, his mouth slack. It scarcely seemed to matter.

Then one rip squealed, the squeal cut off sharply by the thud of a club. And long and supple feet, caricatures of human hands, deadly claws raked and tore. And still he stood there, moving not. There was a pause.

“We haves come in peace,” Norna said. Her voice trembled, perhaps in her heart she still feared the rorks and their men as she did the rips. “We haves no weapons, sees….” She said the things that Ran had wanted to say, and she was suffered to say them out. And there was then another pause.

It was the same band, rorks and men, which had ordered them out, angrily refused to listen. They had followed to make sure of their leaving, grimly determined to destroy them if they failed to climb Last Ridge by sundown time. And now they realized that Lomar and Norna really had put their own lives in jeopardy, and had not … probably not … been laying another trap.

“But it was no trap,” Ran found his voice again. “It was not us. Let us make another time, and I will promise you defense. We can meet this time at Hollow Rock. Will you trust us?”

Long, long were the shadows in the redwing glades. And long, long was the silence. Then it was broken.

“We will trust. We will trust you.”

Whatever victory Flinders had achieved by the massacre at Tiggy’s Hill did him no good. The presence of the unknown men among the rorks, dead at the foot of the Hill, had caused strange rumors to spread throughout South Tockland.
Men among rorks!
It was more than unheard of — it was unbelievable — yet, it had to be believed.

There was no particular reason in logic why this should have resulted in any loss of face by Flinders. And perhaps it was not exactly face which he did lose. But the matter was strange, the matter was fearful, the Wild people shrank from it; and, since Flinders was connected with it, they shrank from Flinders. The expected rendezvous of the clans allied with him never came about. After waiting long in vain, he broke his bivouac on Tiggy’s Hill and decamped.

The union thus interrupted was not one easily put together again. The return of the sachems from the North found their people both restless and uneasy. The story brought back was not one quickly or easily assimilated, and both it and the tentative agreement based upon it had to remain for some uncertain time in the realm of talk. One thing, however, was easily understood:

Guild Station had given gun-makings and sulphur for gun-powder, and both were to be used against Flinders. There was no uncertainty about this. Given more guns, the Wild Tocks had no objection to assailing Heaven itself. Flinders’ support melted like soft snow in the spring sun; indeed, it scarcely survived the knowledge that declaring against him would bring matchlocks and powder. Soon every smithy rang with the sound of hammers; seasoned timber saved for years against such a chance was brought out to be turned into gunstocks, and charcoal and stinking nitre was fused with sulphur at the primitive powder-mills: ground, moistened, caked, carefully broken, ground again.

Flinders heard, of course. He would have had to have been deaf in ears and insight not to have. And Flinders did not wait Down from the Crag he came, raging and furious; attacked Nimmai, was driven back; feinted at Owelty, but did not press his chance; and was caught there between the two when Dominis and Mallardy and the others came grimly up against him. His losses were heavy, and he went limping off like a rork on three legs, nothing but an unexpected rain that doused matches and soaked powder saved him from being killed or captured then and there.

He was counted lucky to have regained the ragged and rocky shelter of the Crag once more, where for the moment none cared to risk following, there to brood upon his wrongs and his rights, his ruined hopes, and his ever scanty larder. The plan of attacking the Guild Station had already receded into the mists which distilled and dripped from the black rocks and the black and mossy limbs of the gaunt trees.

So much, for now, for Flinders.

• • •

In some ways the great powwow at Hollow Rock resembled the arrival of the Q Ship. The same huge pavilion was erected, similar (if not quite the same) victualing arrangements were made. There was that air of excitement and movement once again. But there, perhaps, the resemblance ceased. Q Day, by definition, came but once every five years; but it
came
every five years, and, however new it seemed, it was not new and had never been since the first time. The meeting here at the foot of towering Hollow Rock, unique in geological formation, was itself unique in social formation. No one knew quite what to expect.

Harb, Lomar, a number of aides (these still in a state of shock, not so much at the prospect of meeting rorks face-to-face as it were, as having to do without drink for the duration of the meeting), and a number of Tame Tocks arrived as scheduled by aerospacecraft. They saw the smoke of the Wild men’s cook fires slowly rising up through the soft air — men: they had brought no women. But, then, except for Norna neither had the Station group.

Morning of the day set for powwow found Northerners and Southerners still alone, and, as the day drew on, Ran became so nervous that he began to regret the SO’s ban on booze. There was good enough reason for the ban, most of the Station personnel being basically unstable and hence unpredictable. Such had been known to crack and run amok before; besides, Harb did not feel that a rork would appreciate a toast to “dead rorks,” whether understanding it or not.

The Wild ones had held off at first from entering the pavilion, either from suspicion or shyness. While Harb was discussing with Ran how to overcome this — “Isn’t it a patriarchal tradition, or something, boy, that if you eat a man’s victuals, it’s bad form to blow his brains out with a blunderbuss?” — and while Ran, half-listening, was scanning the landscape for signs of the rork-folk, Norna had taken matters into her own hands.

“Jun,” she said, coming up to the Mister Mallardy, who stood a bit apart from his fellows; “be’s vexed with me because I takens another for my man?”

He eyed her straightly for a moment without talking. Then he said, “May be’s if I gones into Rorkland wi’ you, you’s taken me.” She said nothing to this, and he went on, “But I wasn’t. I gots no right to be’s vexed.”

“I’m glad. Then come into the tent-house with me, and we’s eats a bite together.”

The ice, thus broken, never froze again, and Ran gave over his lookout and joined everyone in the pavilion. Gradually and guardedly there began to grow between he and Jun that rather special kind of relationship which exists only between two men who have competed for the same woman, to the loss of one of them. It was much later in the day when a sudden fall in the congregation brought all eyes to the door. It was one of the Station aides, and it was obvious that he had somehow evaded the ban on booze. In a voice which combined amazement, intoxication, dismay, and befuddlement, he announced loudly and clearly, “Oh, my ass and my ankles — the place is full of rorks!”

• • •

They had been asked to bring fifty of their number, and to this they had scrupulously adhered: there were twenty-five rorks and twenty-five of their men. And “men” in this case included women. For the first time Ran — and, of course, the others — saw female foundlings. There were not many of them … a young woman, a girl of perhaps ten, carrying an even younger child on her hip, and an old, a very old crone. It was she who broke the silence as those in the pavilion streamed outside.

“Smells,” she muttered. “They smells …” The pa virion’s accommodations included a bathing unit and it had been liberally used, but every living thing has its own incessant and distinctive odor. A life in the wilds of Rorkland had sharpened her senses. The next to speak was Rango. He took a step forward, scanned the faces of the assembled rorkmen, said, uncertainly, low at first, then higher, “Butty? Butty?”

No one spoke. Helplessly, he repeated, once, “Butty.” It was no longer a question. Then one of the rorkmen who had not moved a muscle, stepped slowly forward. Rango looked at him. Then they met and embraced, Rango’s face working. But the countenance of his long-lost brother showed only the strange, archaic smile.

Lomar, feeling his eyes smart, said, without turning his head, “You see now, all of you, how human beings do live among the rorks. Could you want better proof that rorks and men can work together? Of course the rork will attack men — if they are attacked themselves. But not otherwise.

“Rorks. Will you come forward now? One by one, please, and slowly. Rorks? Come?”

Again the silence. The wind spoke, nothing else. Then, slowly, slowly, on his great and high kneed legs, an old one, more grey than black, came stepping forward. Halfway toward the pavilion he paused. “Ror’k. Come,” it said. And, “Ror’k c’ome in peace.” Next to him, Ran heard someone make a noise in his throat. The creature took another few steps forward, and sank down, folding its legs. It was only then that the Tame Tocks seemed to wake up to what was actually happening. As a second rork came forward they all felt for their charms, started to squat down and mumble their apotropaic formula. But none of them finished doing so. Slowly they straightened up. Some still continued to hold onto their ju-ju bags. But Ran felt that the first step toward the conquest of fear had been taken.

And in such a situation, it was the first step which counted.

• • •

Rorkland had to be mapped.

So Ran’s thought was, standing there on an unnamed and rain-soaked hill somewhere in the uncharted heartlands. Aerial surveys had doubtless long ago been made and were probably somewhere available. But they weren’t available
now,
and would be of limited use in the present circumstances. It was in filling this gap that the rorkmen were found, unexpectedly, to be of especial help.

One of them came scrambling up to him now, rain streaming from his hair and naked breast and shoulders. “What’s ahead down there, Tranakh — in that glen full of ferns?” Ran asked him.

The man told him, half in speech and half in gestures, that the glen widened considerably, that it contained a small brook. It was unlikely, he thought, that any rips were there … but there might be.

Ran nodded, and, turning bis head, spoke into the small mike-piece on his shoulder, Tranakh trotting back to his scouting mission immediately. In a few minutes a small band of men entered the glen. Ran knew, though he could not see, that another one would be approaching from the other end. If there were any rips in the little cove they would not leave it alive The sides were too steep. He brushed his rainy face and started down the hill, taking with him a long pole with a white flag on it. At this signal other white flags moved on, from far right and far left. Like an irregular wave, he knew, the movement would spread east and west the breadth of the narrow continent.

The war against the rips proceeded its slow, but reasonably certain, pace.

The war was an important one, important by the nature of the enemy. But more — much more — important by reason of the nature of the allies. In one month, he had upset the notions and the habits of centuries. Tame Tocks working alongside of Wild ones — not, not yet, literally alongside or side by side, but at least in the same endeavor — and
knowingly
so. Wild Tocks cooperating with Guildsmen! And, of course, most wondrous of all: Man (civilized, barbaric, degenerate),
Man was working with rorkl
It was all very revolutionary, but perhaps it had been swept along in part by its very immensity. Only Flinders and Flinders’ Clan, still sullen and recalcitrant in their stronghold on the Crag, held aloof from the campaign.

Ran sighed, faintly, recollecting that this great project in mutual aid was to hold good for only one year. It was too bad, too bad, but it appeared that the time was not yet ripe for an attempt to institute a perpetual con cord. For a year, at any rate, the two species (including the four classes of men: Wild Tocks, Tame Tocks, Guildsmen and rorkmen) were cooperating to wipe out the two common enemies — the predatory rips and the crippling disease they bore.

A voice spoke now in Ran’s ear, from the tiny speaker plug there. “Skimmer Five, reporting to Command.”

“How’s it going your way, Motor Aide?”

“Just a bit slow … don’t let them move too fast ahead, east of center. We don’t want to break the line.”

“All right. What’s the holdup there?”

“Quite a big rip pack down on the coast a ways back — part of it broke through and they had to move the line back to make sure none got away. Hey! I got a few of them, myself!”

“Very good, very good, MO! Anything else?”

“Nothing else for now Skimmer Five, closing out.”

Whether it was Tan Carlo Harb’s potent powers of persuasion or whether the situation had actually impressed itself upon the Motor Aide, or whatever it was — Starchy Manton had actually broken through at least one of his obsessions and allowed that a genuine emergency was at hand. He had put all his skimmers into use, and his ground craft, too (limited though its value was in uncleared, roadless Rorkland); and was participating with eagerness. Perhaps, too, the fading into the distance of the last Q Day, with its mysterious fears that he would be shanghaied aboard, had something to do with his vigorous emergence from his shell.

Similar things had happened with some of the other Guildsmen. It was reported, for example, that Reldon, in charge of a message center moving up the west coast, had not touched a drop since the campaign began! And old “Cap” Conders, leaving his rank-smelling curing sheds for the first time in years, had thrown himself into the work so enthusiastically that the Medical Aide had been obliged to order him to slow down.

At its most basic, the campaign comprised an irregular rectangle which constantly moved in upon its own center from all four sides. The Tame Tocks comprised the Northern Line, moving steadily south. The Wild Tocks, on the other hand, constituted the Southern Line, and moved steadily north. In both cases “steadily” was merely approximate. When these two longitudes reached set points as they worked towards each other, the rorks whom they would find waiting for them would commence moving inland from the coasts; the Western Line moving east, the Eastern Line moving west. As all four lines gradually decreased the area of the rectangle they naturally were spread less thin.

And a good thing, too!

Usually the hunted rips did not wait for the lines to come within striking distance, but fled upon their approach. First came the men, armed with pikes and hacks and clubs and guns. Behind them, the women and boys, drumming on everything that would drum and clashing everything that would clash; meanwhile shouting and howling and making shrill ululations. Where the ground was clear enough for the skimmers that passed continually back and forth aloft to see that no rips lay closely near ahead, the spaces between the people was increased: else they would have driven a good part of the ground fauna of Pia 2 ahead of them; instead the animals were allowed to pass through the gaps in the line.

The speed of each line and of each section of line naturally varied with weather and terrain. On clear days, cool and crisp, over the grassy flats and low rolling terrain, which would have made and might yet make such excellent pasture, the going was good. Rain, excessive heat, gullied and broken ground, all would slow up the passage. Mountains and valleys, naturally, reduced it to a crawl; thick forests, swamps and brambles, heavy stands of whip grass — there were no great rivers in Rorkland, none that could not be forded except when the greater rainy season had increased them to torrents.