A World Divided (75 page)

They arrived at the ranger station late the next day; Barron, unpacking his crates by lamplight in the large; airy room allotted to him, realized grudgingly that at least Valdir had spared no pains to make a guest comfortable. There were ample shelves and cupboards for his working tools, benches and space with good light—the pressure lamps produced unusual amounts of light from the relatively crude fuels extracted from resins and oils of the local trees. A broad window of clear glass—not common on Darkover, not much desired, and evidently provided for the comfort of the Terran guest—provided an unbelievable panoramic view of mountains, and ridge after ridge of forested and rocky slopes and heights. As Barron stood at the window, watching the huge red sun of Darkover setting behind the peak— the mountains here were so high that the sun was hidden even before the night’s mist formed—he was touched again with that uncanny sense which made his heart race; but by sheer force of will he kept himself from succumbing to it, and went out to explore the station.

From where it sat at the top of one of the tallest peaks, it commanded a view—even without climbing to the tower behind—of what seemed like hundreds of square miles of forested country; Barron counted fifteen small villages, each lying sheltered in a fold of the hills, each only a cluster of dim roofs. At this distance he could see why telescopes would be needed; the view stretched so far that it vanished in haze through which no unaided eye could penetrate and which could easily hide a thin coil of smoke. He could even see the faraway roofs of Armida, and, high in the hills, a dim pale spire which looked like a castle.

“With your lenses,” Larry told him, joining him at the doorway of the station, “we will see forest fires while they are still only small blazes, and save our timber. Look.” He pointed to the side of a faraway ridge which was a black scar in the green. “That burned five years ago; it was out of control only for a day or two, but even though every man from seven villages turned out, we lost I forget how many square miles of good timber and resin trees. Also, from here, we could see and give the warning, if bandits or something attacked.”

“How do you give warning? There seem to be no sirens or any such things here.”

“Bells, fire beacons—” He pointed to a high pile of dry weed carefully isolated behind a ditch filled with water, “And also, signaling devices—I don’t think I ever knew the Terran name for them.” He showed Barron the shiny metal plates. “Of course they can only be used on sunny days.”

“Heliograph,” Barron said.

“That’s it.”

Barron had expected to feel like a fish out of water, but the first few days went smoothly enough. There were six men at the ranger station, serving tours of duty of fifteen days each and then being replaced by others, in a staggered rotation system which sent three new men every seven days. Currently Gwynn was in command of the station. Larry seemed a sort of supernumerary, and Barron wondered if he was there only to interpret, or to keep an eye on the stranger. From something Gwynn said, he eventually decided that Larry was there to learn the management of the station, so that he could take his place in a series of responsible duties held in sequence by all younger men of Darkovan families. Colryn was there as Barron’s assistant, specifically to learn the work of lens-grinding and to teach the making and use of the telescopes and lenses to any of the rangers who were willing to learn.

Barron knew, from his orientation lectures years ago, that Darkover was a world without complex technology or industry, and he had expected that the Darkovans would not be very adept at learning what he had come to teach. He was surprised to see the swiftness with which Colryn and the others picked up the rudiments of optics, his instructions on the properties of reflected and refracted light, and, later, the technical work of grinding. Colryn in particular was apt at picking up the technical language, the meticulous scientific techniques; so was Larry, who hung around when he was not out on patrol, but then Barron had expected it of Larry, who was a Terran and seemed to have at least the rudiments of a Terran education. But Colryn was a surprise.

He said as much one afternoon, when they were working in the upstairs workroom; he had been showing the younger man how to set and adjust one of the complex grinding tools and how to check it with the measuring instruments for proper set. “You know, you really don’t need me,” he said. “You could have picked this up on your own with a couple of textbooks. It was hardly worth Valdir’s trouble to bring me all the way out here; he could simply have gotten books and equipment from the Terran Zone and turned them over to you.”

Colryn shrugged. “He’d have to have me taught to read’em first.”

“You can speak some Terran Standard; you wouldn’t have that much trouble learning. As nearly as I can tell, the Darkovan script isn’t so complicated that you’d have any difficulty with Empire letters.”

Colryn laughed this time. “I couldn’t say. Maybe if I could read at all, I could read Terran Standard. It’s nothing I’ve ever stopped to think about.“

Barron stared in frank shock; Colryn
seemed
intelligent enough! He looked at Larry, expecting to exchange a look of consternation at this barbarous planet; but Larry frowned slightly and said, almost in reproof, “We don’t make a fetish of literacy on Darkover, Barron.”

Suddenly he felt condemnatory and like a stranger again. He almost snarled, “How in the hell does anyone learn anything, then?”

He could see Colryn visibly summoning up patience and courtesy toward the boorish stranger, and felt ashamed. Colryn said, “Well, I’m learning, am I not? Even though I’m no sandal-wearer, to sit and wear my eyes out over printed pages!”

“You’re certainly learning. But you mean you have no system of education?”

“Probably not the way you mean it,” said Colryn. “We don’t bother with writing unless we’re in the class that has to spend their time reading and writing. We’ve found that too much reading spoils the eyes—weren’t you telling me, a few days ago, that about eighty per cent of your Terrans have imperfect vision and have to wear false lenses to their eyes? It would seem to make more sense to set those people to doing work which doesn’t need so much reading—anyway, too much writing things down spoils the memory; you don’t remember a thing properly if you can go and look it up. And when I want to learn something, why should I not learn it the sensible way, from someone who can show me if I am doing it properly, without the intermediary of printed symbols between us? With only a book to learn from, I might misunderstand and get into the way of doing things wrong, whereas here, if I make a mistake you can set me right at once, and the skill gets into my hands, so that my hands will remember how the work is done.”

Not really convinced, Barron let the discussion drop. He had to admit that the arguments were singularly coherent for someone he now had to reclassify as an illiterate. His systems of thinking were shaken up; communications devices had always been his field. Colryn said, evidently trying to bend over backward and see his point of view, “Oh, I didn’t say there was anything wrong with reading, in itself. If I were deaf or crippled, I’m sure I would find it useful—” But understandably, this did not calm Barron’s ruffled feelings.

Not for worlds would he have admitted what was really bothering him most at the moment. His hands went on, with almost automatic skill, adjusting the delicate micrometric measurements on the grinding tool, and connecting it to the small wind-powered generator. While Colryn was talking, the argument somehow seemed familiar. It was as if he had heard it all before, in some other life! He thought, with black humor, that if this went on, he would come to believe in reincarnation!

His eyes blurred before him, colors running into one another and blearing into unfamiliar patches, shapes and groups without reference. He looked at the equipment in his hands as if he had never seen it before. He turned the pronged plug curiously in his hands; what was he supposed to do with this thing? As it focused and came clear, he found that he was staring wildly at Colryn, and Colryn looked strange to him.

All the strange colors flooded together again and sight went out; he found himself standing on a great height, looking down at a scene of ruin and carnage, hearing men shrieking, and swords clashing. As it blotted out sight, he found himself once again looking up at rushing flames, and in the midst of the fire was a smiling woman, flame-haired; lapped in fire as another woman might stand beneath a waterfall. Then the woman faded and was only a great female shape, fire-crowned and golden-chained....

“Barron!” The cry cut through his consciousness and he came briefly back, rubbing his eyes, to see Colryn and Larry staring at him in consternation. Larry caught the lens machine from his hands as he swayed and crashed to the floor.

When he came to himself again, water trickling down his throat, they were both staring down at him with troubled concern in their faces. Colryn was apologetic: “I think you’ve been working too hard. I shouldn’t have gotten into that argument with you; you have your ways and we have ours. Have you had seizures like this often?”

Barron simply shook his head. The argument hadn’t bothered him that much, and if Colryn wanted to explain it away as an epileptic fit or something of that sort, that was all right with him and probably a saner explanation than whatever it really was. Perhaps he was suffering some sort of brain damage!
Oh, well, at least when it happens out here in the Darkovan mountains, I’m not likely to be responsible for crashing a couple of spaceships!

Colryn might have accepted this explanation but it was quickly obvious that Larry hadn’t. He sent Colryn away, saying that he was sure Barron wouldn’t feel like working for the rest of the day; then he began slowly to put the lens-grinding equipment away. Barron started to get up and help him, and Larry gestured to him to stay put.

“I can manage; I know where this stuff goes. Barron, what do you know of Sharra?”

“Nothing—less than nothing.”
It’s damned unhandy having a telepath around.
“You tell me.”

“I don’t know that much. She was an ancient goddess of the forge people. But gods and goddesses, here on Darkover, are more than just something you say your prayers to, or burn incense to, or ask for favors. They seem to be real—tangible, I mean.”

“That sounds like rubbish, gobbledygook.”

“I mean, what they call gods, we’d call forces—real, solid forces you can touch. For instance—I don’t know much about Sharra. The Darkovans, especially in the Comyn, don’t like to talk about Sharra worship. It was outlawed years ago; it was thought to be too dangerous. Also, it seemed to involve human sacrifice, or something like it. What I mean is, the forge people called on Sharra, using the proper talisman or whatever—these things concentrate forces, I don’t know how—and Sharra would bring the metallic ore up out of the mountains for them.”

“And you a Terran? And you believe all that stuff? Larry, there are legends like that on every planet in the Empire.”

“Legend be damned,” said Larry. “I told you I don’t think they’re gods as we use the term. They may be some form of—well, entity or being—maybe from some other dimension. For all I know, they could be an invisible race of nonhumans. Valdir told me a little about the outlawing of Sharra worship—it happened here in the mountains. His people, the Altons and the Hasturs, had a lot to do with it; they had to go into the hills and confiscate all the talismans of Sharra so that the forge people couldn’t call up these forces any more. Among other things, I gather, the fires sometimes got out of control and started forest fires.”

“Talismans?”

“Stones—they call them matrix stones—blue crystals. I’ve learned to use them a little; believe me, they’re weird. If you have even rudimentary telepathic force, you concentrate your thoughts on them and they—well, they do things. They can lift objects—psychokinesis—create magnetic fields, create force-field locks that no one can open except with the same matrix, and so forth. My foster sister could tell you more about them.” Larry looked distressed. “Valdir should know, if Sharra images can even get to you, a Terran. I should send to him, Barron.”

Barron shook his head urgently. “No! Don’t trouble Valdir; this is my problem.”

“No trouble. Valdir will want to know. Valdir is of the Comyn. He must know if these things are coming into the mountains again. They could be dangerous for us all, and especially for you.” He smiled a troubled smile. “I shared a knife with you, and it is a pledge,” he said. “I have to stand your friend whether you want me to or not. I’ll send for Valdir tonight.”

He finished closing the box with the lens blanks, and turned to go. “You’d better rest; nothing is urgent, and I have to go out on patrol,” he said. “And don’t worry; it is probably nothing to do with you. You have evidently picked up something that is loose in these mountains, and Valdir will know how to deal with it.” He paused at the door, said urgently, “Please believe that we are your friends, Barron.” He left.

Alone, Barron lay on the wide bed, that smelled of the resin-needles used to stuff the mattress. He wondered why it seemed so urgent to him that Valdir should not be sent for. He heard Larry ride away with the patrol; he heard Colryn singing downstairs; and he heard the wind rise and begin blowing from the heights. He got up and went to the wide window. Down in these valleys and hills lay villages of unsuspecting men, little knots and nests of nonhumans in the thickest and most impenetrable forests, and birds and wildlife; they would be safer for protection against forest fire and raiding bandits—catmen and nonhumans and the terrible Ya-men. He would help with that, he was doing good work; why then was he gripped by this sense of fearful urgency and despair, as if he sat idling while around him a world fell into ruins? Disoriented, he covered his eyes.

It was quiet at the station. He knew that in the tower a ranger in the usual green and black uniform scanned the surrounding countryside for any signs of smoke; the resin trees, in spite of the nightly rain, were so volatile, that an unexpected thunderstorm could strike one and send it ablaze. The only sound was the wind that never changed and never died; Barron hardly heard it now. And yet there was something—something in the wind....