The Ecolog, page 7
Hours passed.
Shortly before dawn Briggs called a halt.
He turned to the girl. "Have you seen anything of the ngaas?"
She shook her head. "I think one man was enough for them. They probably won't bother us again."
"Probably?"
"You can never be sure."
He nodded. "I see. Then we'd better bed down here and try to grab some sleep while we can."
Phillips said, "We have only three more days before the energy on the Corregidor is used up."
Briggs sighed. "I know, I know. but we have to rest sometime."
The commodore assigned two men to sentry duty and, totally exhausted, fell info a deep sleep. When the sentries were sure everyone was asleep, they stopped pacing and sat down.
Said one, "I can watch just as easily sitting down as standing up."
"Me too," said the other.
Ten minutes later, both were asleep.
Thus no one was awake to hear the stealthy rustle of something moving toward them, slowly and carefully, through the darkness.
CHAPTER 6
At first Briggs was aware only of a sensation of heat. It was a sensation he now knew well. Even with eyes closed he could feel the position of the sun not far above the horizon. The warmth was welcome after the cold of the night; his body was stiff, partly from the night chill and partly from the hardness of his sand-dune bed. It's morning, he thought, and rolled over, reluctant to begin the day, reluctant to open his eyes. Around him he could hear the other men beginning to stir. Then he frowned. Why isn't anyone shaking us awake? The sentries…. Cautiously he opened his eyes a crack.
Standing over him, sword in hand, was a short, dark-skinned man in loose-fitting burnoose, tunic and ballooning white trousers. The man was smiling, but not in a friendly manner.
"Ah, I see you are awake," said the man softly.
He nudged Briggs in the ribs with a sandaled foot, lifting the sword ever-so-slightly as if to say, "Don't try anything." Briggs sat up, careful not to make any sudden moves.
The man went on in a mocking tone, "I have your sword, and your other weapons too, so it would be foolish of you to give us any trouble."
Briggs glanced around. Other burnoose-clad, desert-bronzed little men were standing over the members of his party, including the two sentries. The sentries turned away, ashamed to look Briggs in the eye. "Your guards were asleep," the stranger explained. "Bad discipline." The mocking smile broadened.
How true, thought Briggs. There was a time when men were shot by a firing squad for less. Things had changed.
One of the sentries whispered, "Sorry, sir."
"Who are you?" Briggs asked, turning his attention to his captor.
"I am called Sewall," the muscular little man answered. "I'm a scout for the city of Arbre."
"The city of Arbre?"
"Over there." Sewall pointed toward the horizon.
Briggs stared in the direction indicated and saw a range of mountains not far away. Perhaps this was what he'd dimly seen the day before, but had mistaken for a sandstorm.
"You live in the mountains?" Briggs asked.
"No. The Ecolog lives in the mountains. We live in the jungle at the foot of the mountains."
Briggs squinted. Yes, indeed, a city was there, half-hidden in distant greenery. It was, like the abandoned city in the desert, surrounded by a high white wall. Briggs asked, "Are you taking us there?"
"That's right. Now, on your feet!"
Briggs obeyed, and the rest of his party followed his example. The last to stand was Garbage. Sewall scowled at her and grunted, "What are you doing still alive?"
She replied bitterly. "Would it make you feel better if I killed myself here and now?"
Sewall raised his sword. "That's an excellent idea; but unfortunately I'm under orders to bring you all to Arbre alive, so march!"
They marched.
Waiting for them beyond the next dune was a small herd of horselike animals, apparently native to the planet. The animals were six-legged and three-eyed and scaled like reptiles. Sewall spoke to the creatures in a whistling, twittering language, to which they replied sullenly. Sewall translated, chuckling, "They don't like your smell" He grinned at Briggs.
The feeling was mutual. The creatures had a cheap rose perfume smell not unlike that of the ngaas.
"Mount up," Sewall commanded, indicating the saddle and stirrups each animal wore. Briggs stepped into a stirrup and swung into the saddle. The creature craned its skinny neck around and regarded him with three red eyes full of undisguised hostility. "Easy, boy," Briggs murmured soothingly. The creature answered with a few contemptuous monosyllables.
When everyone was mounted, Sewall gave an order in creature-language, and the procession set off in the direction of Arbre.
In spite of a rather ungainly appearance, the creatures were remarkably fast. They had no reins—none were needed since they responded perfectly to verbal commands in their own language—and Briggs found himself clinging for dear life to a kind of handlebar on the front of his saddle. The wind whipped through his desert garb, causing his cloak to stream out behind him as he lurched forward and back, forward and back. Briggs began to feel somewhat ill and Sewall, noticing his discomfort, only laughed.
"If you join us, we'll teach you to ride," called the little brown man, and for the first time his voice held a hint of warmth.
Less than an hour had passed, according to Briggs's guess, when the dead sands of the desert were quite abruptly behind them. They found themselves galloping along a wide, two-lane dirt road between broad expanses of green, irrigated fields. Men in dirty-white burnooses worked rhythmically and sang. The agriculture was primitive, Briggs realized. On an advanced planet all the crops would have been in kilometer after kilometer of plastic-covered terrariums. With terrarium agriculture, food could be grown almost anywhere, even in the desert, on a fraction of the water needed for open-air agriculture, and with no danger from pests.
Briggs nodded with satisfaction. Everything fitted the pattern he had suspected almost from the first. The Ecolog might have a technology in some ways more advanced than his own, but she was keeping it to herself.
Ahead loomed the vast city gates. At a shouted password from Sewall, the massive wood doors swung open to allow them to pass. A moment later Briggs was thundering along a wide, paved street where vendors and townspeople scrambled to get out of his way. How to stay in power? Briggs was thinking. Just make sure you're the only one who knows how things work. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the great powers of the northern hemisphere had used a similar strategy to keep what was called "The Third World" in its place.
In fact, with no great effort of the imagination, Briggs could visualize himself back on Earth, before the space age, somewhere below the Tropic of Cancer—in Africa, South America, or Vietnam—perhaps in Southern India with a head full of spiritual values and a belly full of nothing. The city of Arbre could have come from the past in some immense time machine.
The only thing that didn't fit was the animals.
On Earth the beasts of burden and the house pets did not have six or eight legs. On Earth, animals did not, as they obviously did here, converse with each other and with their masters in a highly developed if nonhuman language. But even back on Earth the animals had been citizens of human civilization, though they occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder.
The sickly sweet rose smell of the alien animals was everywhere, dominating even the smell of dung and rancid vegetable oil; their twittering and squeaking could be heard mingling with the vendors' cries and children's screams and workers' curses. It was impossible to tell which group was more numerous; the humans or the aliens. And, thought Briggs uncomfortably, who am I to call those beings aliens? After all, they were here first.
Briggs's steed halted so suddenly that Briggs was almost thrown from the saddle. The other steeds gathered in a milling crowd in what appeared to be the city's central square. One of the creatures spoke to another with what sounded like sarcasm. Briggs asked Garbage, "What are they saying?"
With a toss of the head she replied, "How should I know? Am I a townie?"
Sewall moved alongside, saying angrily, "Who are you calling a townie?"
With false sweetness she replied, "Everyone else but you."
He growled, "A remark like that could cost you your life."
"If you were going to kill me, you'd have done it already," she pointed out with the same false sweetness.
He glared at her a moment before shouting, "Dismount!"
They had ascended a broad marble staircase and now were entering the echoing vastness of a dim, high-vaulted hallway. Sewall led the way, with Commodore Briggs, Lieutenant Phillips and Garbage right behind. The rest followed.
Briggs noted that, in spite of his muscular body and commanding manner, there was something feminine about Sewall, something delicate and fastidious. With a connoisseur's smile, Sewall was studying the ornate floral patterns carved into the walls they were passing. Was this man an architect, or an artist, or both?
Briggs remarked, "Beautiful workmanship."
Sewall nodded, pleased. "It's 100 years old," he said, as proudly as if he'd made the designs himself.
They ascended another flight of marble stairs.
Briggs noted that the wall decorations had become cruder, uglier, more amateurish, He asked Sewall, "Are these designs earlier?"
Sewall turned and stopped walking. In the dim light, his face was clouded and defensive. "No, later." He gestured toward the walls. "This is all modern work here… contemporary."
In Briggs's mind another piece of the puzzle fell into place. He smiled faintly. Yes, in more ways than one Arbre could have been transported here by some time machine from twentieth-century Earth.
Presently, they halted before a heavy, dark-stained wood door. Two white-burnoosed guards stood at attention, one on each side of the doorway. They were armed with steel-tipped spears.
Sewall's voice fell to a whisper. "This is the office of our Lord Mayor, the Right Honorable Broog Mano." He addressed one of the guards. "I am Scout Sewall. I have prisoners for the Lord Mayor's questioning."
The guard replied in a bored tone, "The outlanders?"
"Yes."
"They are expected. Bring them in."
The second guard opened the door and stood aside for Sewall, Briggs, Phillips and Garbage. "The rest of you wait outside," said the first guard. The way was suddenly blocked by their spears.
When the door had shut behind him, Sewall said respectfully, "Lord Mayor?"
A curtain parted at the back of the shadowed room and a tall, black-robed man appeared. Briggs had a glimpse of something behind the curtain, something that strongly resembled a large shortwave radio set; then the heavy drape fell back in place, concealing this apparently secret piece of anachronistic equipment.
"Ah, Scout Sewall," said the Lord Mayor, walking slowly forward. The Lord Mayor was a dignified man in his seventies, almost bald but for a fringe of gray hair. "You have done well."
Sewall grinned, "Thank you, sir." For a moment the little man looked very much like a pleased teenager.
Lord Mayor Mano extended his hand to Briggs, saying, "Welcome to Arbre. Is there anything I can get for you?"
They shook hands. Briggs was surprised by the sudden hospitality, but he answered without thinking, "You can give me back my claymore."
Mano frowned, puzzled. "Claymore?"
"My sword."
Mano turned toward Sewall and said, "Give the man his sword, please."
Sewall was flustered. "But your honor—"
"Give it to him."
Sewall opened his cloak to produce the weapon and reluctantly handed it over.
"Thank you," said Briggs, slipping the blade into its scabbard.
Mano explained, "Scout Sewall disarmed you for your own good. You might have done yourself injury in trying to escape, might even have died in the desert. Actually we have only the most friendly of intentions toward you."
"Indeed?"
"Of course!"
"Then can we trouble you for a little time on your master computer?"
Mano looked blank. "Computer? What's a computer?"
"It's a machine that computes… does arithmetic."
Mano brightened. "Oh, I know what you mean. Wait a moment." The Lord Mayor disappeared behind his drapes. Briggs breathed a sigh of infinite relief and said to Mike, "It looks like things are going to be easy for once."
Mike grinned. "That'll be a change."
Lord Mayor Mano was also grinning as he reappeared from behind the curtain. "Here you are. My computer." With eager generosity, he offered Briggs a well-worn Chinese bead abacus.
Mano had led them out onto a broad balcony. The morning sun was blindingly bright after the dimness of the office. The Lord Mayor, with a note of awe in his voice, pointed a long finger toward the mountains. "That is the fortress of the Ecolog. If anyone knows about such things as computers, she does."
Shading his eyes with his hand, Briggs gazed upward. There, beyond the first range, well above the tree line—in fact on the peak of the highest mountain in sight—was a silver tower, a squat, domed building and an irregularly shaped wall. These structures were too far away for him to make out any details, but Briggs received an impression of advanced scientific building techniques. And that dome… was it made from solid gold?
At his elbow, Garbage muttered, "It wasn't easy to get down from there. I don't know if it's possible to get up."
"We'll find a way," said Briggs firmly. He turned to Mano and added, "Lord Mayor, can you send the Ecolog a radio message for us?"
The man turned pale. "I cannot call her. It is she who calls me."
"This is an exception."
"There are no exceptions." With effort, Mano got a grip on himself, "She will call soon, I'm sure, and then we can bring up any questions you might have—tactfully of course."
Briggs cocked his head to one side. "Tell me, sir. If something goes wrong with your radio, how do you repair it?"
The old man seemed surprised by the question. "I don't repair it. Nobody in the city of Arbre can repair a radio. The Ecolog sends someone."
Briggs nodded thoughtfully. "I see. Be frank now. Don't you sometimes resent being so totally dependent?"
"Not at all. The secrets of electric things are known only to the Ecolog and to her court, and that is the way it should be. If everyone had such knowledge, there would be competition, perhaps war. This way we always have peace. And we are protected from each other, from the outsiders."
"Like us?" Briggs demanded.
"No offense intended. We mean you no harm."
Garbage added derisively, "The Ecolog tells you what to plant and when, what to make and how much, even who to marry and how many children to have. What a relief it must be never to have to decide about anything!"
The Lord Mayor snapped, "I won't take that from your kind!"
The girl answered sharply, "What kind is that? Don't you know I used to live in that castle up there on the mountain?"
"Yes, of course. But you were cast out, rejected."
"But why? Why was I cast out?"
Mano seemed confused. "I don't know. You must have been imperfect in some way."
"Imperfect?" The girl was frowning. "But I was exactly like all the others."
Mano became self-assured, even pompous. "I'm sure there was something. The Ecolog has reasons for everything she does. She's not like you and me. She's 300 years old, yet still young and beautiful. She'll never grow any older. She has the wisdom of the old and the brightness of the young, both at the same time. And since she will never die, her mind is not clouded by the fears that plague mortals. She is beautiful, too. She's the most beautiful woman who ever—"
Garbage broke in. "If she's so beautiful, why does she wear a mask? She could be a monster and nobody would know."
Mano was aghast at this suggestion. "Blasphemy! Blasphemy!"
Sewall joined in the conversation, his voice teasing, ironic. "The girl may be right. The mask is beautiful, with all the platinum and jewels and everything, but who can say what's behind the mask? There are times when she certainly acts like a monster."
"I'm warning you, Sewall." said Mano.
"Warning me? You cannot frighten a man who has faced a pack of hungry ngaas in the dunes at night. We owe these strangers nothing; but we would be poor hosts if we did not at least give them the truth. We have nothing to lose." The little man turned to face Briggs. "Once a man built an outhouse where it might pollute a public well. She ran him through with that jeweled sword of hers. Once a woman gave birth to three children instead of the legal two. The Ecolog slit the throat of the extra child and the doctors sterilized the mother. And when a child is feeble-minded, deformed or sickly—"
Mano protested, "It is not for us to judge the Ecolog. She is all-wise, all-knowing!"
"Is she?" said Sewall. "Or is she merely all-powerful?"
Briggs said dryly, "No mere human is all-powerful."
"But," Sewall persisted, "a human can become so powerful nobody dares oppose her."
Mano said stiffly, "That's treasonous talk, Sewall."
"Treasonous?" The little scout's tone was unctuous. "Not at all! I am Her Majesty's most loyal servant." He bowed. "But, unlike most citizens of Arbre, I insist on serving with open eyes." He became more serious. "There may once have been a time when revolt against the Ecolog was possible, but that time is now long past. Only fools dream of the impossible! Isn't that right, my Lord Mayor Mano?"
The mayor had been glancing around uneasily as if searching for eavesdroppers. "Oh yes. That's right. Of course." With a pained expression, the old man turned to Briggs. "I hope this upstart's wild talk hasn't prejudiced you against us."
Briggs said curtly, "Would it matter if it had?"
"Well…" Mano seemed to be having trouble getting to the point. "I want to extend to you an invitation—"
