Authors: James White
He already knew the answer.
"It is recorded only as hearsay." the Teldin replied, "But the hearsay is unapproved, forbidden as a matter for discussion by all levels of slaves. I know nothing other than that it was our first protection against the Scourge."
Suddenly Beth's voice was in his other ear.
"It was probably one of the causes of the Scourge in the first place," she said angrily. 'That hall was once a storage and distribution facility which supplied missiles via the tunnels to less deeply buried launching silos. But you must have spotted that yourself. It certainly answers a lot of my questions."
"I spotted it," Martin said. "But causing the Scourge ... I don't understand you."
"That's because you haven't been trying to make sense of the things the computer is saying about this ring system."
Normally such a system was formed as a result of a satellite or satellites approaching too closely to the primary and being pulled apart by gravitational stresses, she went on, and the debris being strewn along the plane of the moon's original orbit. Continuing collisions would eventually cause the pieces to grind themselves into a uniformly small size. But at the present stage of the process many large pieces should have survived the collisions with the small stuff, since the probability of the relatively few large chunks of the moon colliding with each other was small.
The material orbiting Teldi contained no large pieces of debris.
"Then the ring has been forming for a long time," Martin said, "and the process is far advanced."
"No," Beth said firmly. "The Scourge has been in existence for an extremely short time, astronomically speaking. The process began one thousand one hundred and seventeen years and thirty-three days ago, and was completed forty-seven years and one hundred and two days later."
"Are you surre?"
Beth laughed. "For a moment I thought you were accusing me of using hearsay. The computer is sure and I'm sure, and you know which one of us is omniscient."
"Are there any missiles left?" Martin asked. "Any traces of radioactivity in a forgotten silo somewhere?"
"None," she replied. "The sensors would have detected them. They must have used them all."
She resumed talking as the slow march toward the dais continued, but Martin's thoughts were leaping ahead of her words as piece after piece of the Teldin jigsaw puzzle fitted into place. The reason for the Scourge and the fatalistic acceptance of it was now plain, as was the cause of the pathological distrust of everything which was not experienced first-hand, the rigid stratification of the slaves, and the thinking done from the top which was so characteristic of the military mind. Finally there was the planet-wide catastrophe which had driven the surviving population to shelter in such installations as this, and brought about a situation which was in essence a military dictatorship.
The Hall of Honor and one-time missile arsenal was certainly a key piece of the puzzle, but the picture was not complete.
"I must speak with a Master," Martin said.
"But there's no need!" Beth protested. "Sensor probes have been dropped on this and other cities. We have more than enough data on the ordinary people of this frightful planet. They are resourceful, ethical, hardworking, long-suffering, and, to my mind, wholly admirable. We should say so without delay. Our assessment can be based on an interview with one Teldin, remember, and we were not expected to spend a long time on this assignment. I" say that the slave levels are hi all respects suitable and should be offered Citizenship following reorientation training to neutralize the conditioning of the Masters.
"The slave owners, from what we've learned of them, don't stand a snowball's chance. Our Masters, the Federation, will not abide dictators who-"
"Wait," Martin said.
They had stopped before the dais which, now that he could see it clearly, consisted of a single cube of polished rock measuring just under two meters a side, with a large flag apparently covering the top and hanging down in front. The section of the flag visible to him was dark blue and bore the same design as that which appeared on Skorta's bracelet. The stone was too high for him to see the top surface, until he was suddenly grasped above the knees and under the elbows by four large hands and hoisted into the air...
... And saw the symbol of ultimate authority.
Unlike the richly embroidered flag, the sword looked excessively plain and functional. Simply and beautifully proportioned, it measured nearly two meters long and had a broad, double-edged blade which came to a fine point. Its only decoration was a small, engraved plate on the guard, which reproduced the design on the flag. Martin stared at it until the Teldin's arms began to quiver with the strain of holding him aloft, then he gestured to be put down.
"It is the sword of the Master of Education," Skorta said very quietly. "My Master died recently and a new one has yet to be chosen."
Martin was remembering the long, sharp blade of the weapon and the staining he had seen at its tip. He wet his lips and said, "Has it ever been... used?"
"The sword of a Master," it replied in a voice Martin could barely hear, "must draw blood at least once."
"Is it possible," Martin asked once again, "to speak with a Master?"
"You are an off-world slave," the Teldin replied, emphasizing the last word.
It was the last word, in fact, because neither of them spoke during the long walk back to the base of the cliff where Beth had already moved the lander. Martin had a lot on his mind.
HE had programmed the force shield to interdict inanimate objects and remain pervious to living beings. As a result, it was not the timer which awakened him but the excited voices of more than two hundred young Teldins who were surrounding the lander. The cliff-face and city were still shrouded in pre-dawn darkness, except for the intermittent illumination provided by the Scourge as it drew incandescent lines across the sky. He increased the intensity of die exterior lighting and went outside.
"I can't answer all of your questions at once," he said as his translator signaled overload, "so I will tell you about my vessel and some of the worlds it has visited..."
Except for a few of the older ones who muttered "Hearsay" they became very quiet and attentive. He began talking about planetary environments which were beautiful, terrifying, weird but always wonderful, and on the subject of the Federation he said only that it was a collection of people of many different shapes and sizes and degrees of intelligence who helped each other and who wanted to help Teldi.
When these youngsters grew up, Martin thought, it was likely that they would never again be able to regard their Teldin way of life with complete acceptance. And if die Teldins were not judged suitable for Federation citizenship and were left to fend for themselves, it seemed a particularly lousy trick he was playing on them by talking like this.
"I can't predict where exactly they will hit," Beth broke in urgently, "but that area is in for a bad time. Cut it short!"
"I'll answer a few questions, then send them to shelter," he told her. "The mountain on this side of the valley will protect us, so there's no immediate-"
The sky was lit by a sudden flare of bright orange, the sound of muffled thunder and the ground seemed to twitch under Martin's feet. He broke off and looked around wildly, then up at the cliff. Everything seemed normal.
'That was a big one," Beth said, her voice rising in pitch. "It hit close to the summit directly above you and started a rockslide. You can't see it past the shoulder of the cliff. Tell them to..."
But Martin was already shouting for them to run for the shelter of the school. Nobody moved, and he had to explain quickly, so quickly that he was close to being incoherent, about Beth and the orbiting ship and its instruments which had given advance warning of the rock-fall which they could not yet see.
Still they did not move-they were dismissing his warning as hearsay. He angled one of the tender's lights upward to show the top of the cliff and the first few rocks bouncing into sight over the edge.
They began to run then, too late.
"No, come back!" he shouted desperately. "There's safety here. Get back to the landed"
Some of them hesitated. Without thinking about it Martin sprinted after the others and managed to get ahead of them-they were young and their legs were slightly shorter than his-and wave them back. There were about twenty of them outside the protection of the lander's force shield now, but they were slowing down, stopping. He did not know whether they were simply frightened or confused or, since his recent demonstration of foreknowledge of the rockfall, they believed him when he said that the area around the lander was safe.
The first rocks struck the ground between the lander and the school entrance, bounced outward and rolled toward them. Three of the Teldins were knocked over and another was down hopping and crawling on four hands and a foot, dragging an injured limb behind it. Martin pointed at the glowing line on the ground which marked the edge of the force shield.
"Quickly, move them to the other side of that line. They'll be safe there, believe me!"
He grabbed one of the fallen Teldins by the feet and began dragging it toward the line. The rolling and bouncing rocks were being stopped by the invisible shield, and the other students had realized that the protection was not hearsay. But more than half of them were down, and the uninjured were trying to drag them to safety. Martin pulled his Teldin across the line and went after another.
"Get back, dammit!" Beth shouted. "Half the bloody mountain is falling on you...!"
A rain of fine dust and stones struck his back as he bent over the Teldin casualty, and suddenly a bouncing rock hit him in the back of die leg. He sat down abruptly, tears as well as dust blinding him. The rumbling sound from high up on the cliff was growing louder, and large rocks were thumping into the ground all around him with increasing frequency. The force shield and safety were only a few meters away, but he did not know in which direction.
He was grasped suddenly by four large hands which lifted him and hurled him backward. He tumbled through the shield interface closely followed by the Teldin who had saved him. Martin blinked, trying to clear his vision as expert hands felt along his limbs and body.
"Nothing broken, stranger," the young Teldin said, "Some minor lacerations and bruising on the leg. You should use your own medication to treat the injury."
'Thank you," Martin said. He climbed to his feet and limped toward the lander.
The sound of the rockfall had become muffled because the hemisphere of the force shield was completely covered by loose rocks and soil. Several of the casualties lay looking up at the smooth dome of rubble which had inexplicably refused to fall on them, with expressions which were still unreadable to Martin, while the others had obviously accepted the invisible protection as a fact and were busying themselves with the injured.
When each and every victim and survivor was a trained medic, he thought admiringly, the aftermath of even a major disaster lost much of its horror.
Another young Teldin intercepted him at the tender's entry port. It said, "Thank you, stranger. All of the students who were trying to reach the school have returned or have been returned. There are no fatalities."
Not yet, thought Martin.
He was concerned about the tremendous weight of rock pressing down on the force shield. That shield could handle the heaviest of meteor showers or projectile-firing weapons without difficulty, but it had not, been designed to support the weight of an avalanche. The drain on the small ship's power reserves did not bear thinking about.
He looked at the hemisphere of rocks above and around him, knowing that Beth's repeaters were showing her everything he saw, and asked, “How long can I keep it up?"
"Not long," she said grimly. "But long enough for your air to run out first. There are over two hundred people in there. I'm coming down."