Imperial Stars 3-The Crash of Empire (24 page)

He was killed for breaking the Masters' law.

Which is not the proper law for people
, Dahano'd added in bitterness and in the slow, nourished anger his father'd taught him along with the stories of the times before the Masters.

Take him, Heaven People. Take him, shelter him, for I can do no more for him. Let him live among you forever, for he can no longer live here in the village with me. Take Borthen up among you—take my only son.

In bitterness, in fresh anger and in old, the chant had gone up. It made no difference that the Masters could hear Dahano if they wanted to. Anger they let a person keep, so long as he followed their law. Some day, in some way, that anger would rise and tear down their golden city, but the Masters with their limitless power couldn't help but laugh at the thought.

Perhaps they were right. But last night, as the smoke of Borthen's pyre rose to mingle his soul with those that had gone before it into the sky, Dahano'd seen lights that weren't stars, and faint threads reaching down toward the Masters' golden city on the plain. It was as though the souls of all the people who had burned in funeral hollows behind all the villages were stirring at last.

So now Dahano sat in his doorway, the last of his line, waiting until it was time to go out and work in the hated fields, and wondering if perhaps the golden buildings would come crashing down at last, and the Masters die, and the people of the villages be free again.

But it wasn't a new hope with him or with any of the other villagers. Sometimes a person was driven to believe he could overcome the Masters; rage or thoughts turned too long inward clouded his reason. He rebelled; he cursed a Master or disobeyed a command, and then his foolish hope only caused him to be commanded to die, to die, and to hang in the square. Sometimes a person in cool thought wondered how close a watch the Masters kept. He stayed in his hut when the time came to work, or stayed awake at sleeping time in the hope that the Masters didn't see into quite every person's head. These, too, were always proved mistaken and died.

Dahano kept his omens to himself. An old person learns a great deal of patience. And the Headman of a village learns great caution along with his great anger. He would wait and see, as all his life had taught him. He knew a great number of things; the proper ways to live, the ways of keeping his people as safe as a person could, and all the other things he had learned both from what his father had passed on to him and what he had thought out for himself. But most of all, he knew a slow, unquenchable, immovable waiting.

In the hut next door, he heard Gulegath clatter his cookpot noisily back down on the oven. Dahano's expression sharpened and he listened closely, trying to follow the younger person's movements with his ears.

Gulegath was an angry one. All the villagers were angry, but Gulegath was angry at everyone. Gulegath wouldn't listen to wiser persons. He kept to himself. He was too young to realize how dangerous he was. He was often rude, and never patient.

But Dahano was Headman of the village, and every villager was his concern. It was a Headman's duty to keep his people as safe as possible—to keep the village whole, to protect the generations that weren't yet born—in the end, to protect that generation which would some day come and be free. So, every person—even Gulegath—must be kept safe. Dahano didn't like Gulegath. But this was unimportant, for he was Headman first and Dahano second, and a Headman neither likes nor dislikes. He guards the future, remembers the things that must be remembered and passed on, and he protects.

Gulegath appeared in his doorway—a slight, quick-movemented person who seemed younger than he really was. Dahano looked toward him.

"Good day, Gulegath."

"Good day, Headman," Gulegath answered in his always bitter voice, shaping the words so they sounded like a spiteful curse. He was still too young to be a man; coming from his thin chest, the sound of his voice had no depth, only an edge.

Dahano couldn't quite understand the source of that constant, overpowering bitterness that directed itself at everyone and everything. It was almost a living thing of its own, only partly under Gulegath's control. No one had ever injured him. Not even the Masters had ever done anything to him. He'd burned no sons, had never been punished, had never known more sorrow than every villager was born to. This seemed to make no difference to the special beast that went everywhere with him and made him so difficult to live with.

"How soon before we go out to work, Headman?"

Dahano looked up at the sun. "A few more moments."

"Really? They're generous, aren't they?"

Dahano sighed. Why did Gulegath waste his anger on trifles? "I burned my son last night," he said to remind him that others had greater injuries.

Gulegath extended him no sympathy. He'd found a target for his anger—for now. "Some day, I'll burn
them
. Some day I'll find a way to strike fast enough. Some day I'll hang
their
bodies up for me to look at."

"Gulegath." This was coming too close to self-killing folly.

"Yes, Headman?"

"Gulegath, you're still too young to realize that's a fool's attitude. Things like that aren't to be said."

"Is there a person who doesn't think the same way? What difference if I put it in words? Do you think fear is a wise quality?" Gulegath spoke like a person looking deep inside himself. "Do you think a person should give in to fear?"

"It's not that." Slowly—slowly, now, Dahano told himself. A Headman has a duty to his people. His anger can't keep him from fulfilling it. Be patient. Explain. Ignore his lack of respect for you. "No, Gulegath. It's what too much of that kind of talk can do to you. You must try to discipline yourself. A thought once put in words is hard to change. This anger can turn over and over in your mind. It'll feed on itself and grow until one day it'll pass beyond words and drive you into self-destruction. If you die, the village has lost by that much."
If I let you die, I've failed my duty by that much.

Gulegath smiled bitterly. "Would you grieve for me?" His mouth curled, "Let me believe that some day they'll pay for all this: Get up at a certain time, work in these fields, tend these cattle, stop at a certain time, eat again when the Masters command and sleep when the Masters tell you. Be slaves—be slaves all your aching lives or die and hang in the square to cow the others!" Gulegath clenched his thin fists. "Let me believe I'll end that—let me think I'll find a way and some day burn them in their city. Let me suppose I'll be free."

"Not as soon as that, youngster. No person can rebel against the Masters. They see our thoughts, they come and go as they please, appearing and disappearing as they can. They command a hut to appear and it's there, with beds, with its oven, with a fire in the oven. They command a man to die and he dies. What would you do against persons like that? They aren't persons, they are gods. How can we do anything but obey them? Perhaps your some day'll come, but I don't think you or I will bring it."

"What're we to do, then? Rot year after year in this village?"

"Exactly, Gulegath. Year after year after year. Rot,
save ourselves
, and wait. And hope."

He was thinking of the lights in the sky, and wondering.

The particular Master who oversaw this village was Chugren. He was only a medium-tall person, too heavy for his bones, with a pasty face and red-laced eyes. Dahano had never seen him without a sodden breath or a thickness in his tongue. Any person who wasn't a Master ought to have collapsed long ago under the poisons he seemed to swill as thirstily as a villager gulping water from the bucket in the fields. His visits to the village were only as frequent as they had to be. If he thought very often at all about the village, he was too lazy and too uncaring to come and see to it properly. He contented himself with watching it from his palace among the golden spires of the Masters' city on the plains. Watching it with his drunken, stupored mind.

But this morning he was here. The villagers were just leaving their huts to go to the fields when Dahano saw the Master step out into the middle of the square and stand looking around him.

So, Dahano thought. Last night there were lights in the sky, and today Chugren comes for the first time in months.

The villagers had stopped, clustered in their doorways, and everyone looked impassively at Chugren. Then the Master's gaze reached Dahano, and he beckoned as he always had. "Come over here, Dahano."

Dahano bowed his head. "I hear, Chugren." He shuffled forward slowly, stooping, taking on a slowness and age that were feebler than his own. A slave has weapons against his master, and this was one of them. It seemed like such a trifle, making Chugren wait an extra moment before he reached him. Enough of a trifle so the Master would feel foolish in making an issue of it. But, nevertheless, it was a way of gnawing at the foundation of his power. It meant Dahano was not wholly crushed—not wholly a slave, and never would be.

Finally, Dahano reached Chugren and bowed again. "It is almost time for us to go work in the fields," he muttered.

"It'll wait," Chugren said.

"As the Master wishes." Dahano bowed and hid a thin smile. Chugren was discomfited. Somehow, the slave had scored against the Master once more, simply by reminding him that he was an attentive slave.

"There's time enough for that." Chugren was using a sharp tone of voice, and yet he was speaking slowly. "This village is a disgrace! Look at it—huts falling apart and not a move made to repair them; a puddle of sewage around that broken drain there . . . don't you people do anything for yourselves?"

Why should we?
Dahano thought.

"All right," Chugren went on. "If you people can't clean up after yourselves, I suppose I'll have to do it for you. But if it happens again, you'll see how much nonsense I'll tolerate!" He jerked his arm in quick slashes of motion at the huts. He repaired the drain. In a moment, the village looked new again. "There. Now keep it that way!"

Dahano bowed. His twisted, hidden smile was broader. Another victory. It had been a long time since the last time Chugren gave in on the matter of the huts and drains. But he had given in at last, as Dahano had known he must. It was his village, built by him. His slaves had no wish to keep it in repair for him. This was an old, old struggle between them—but the slaves had won again.

He looked up at Chugren's face. "I hear, Chugren." Then he looked more closely.

He couldn't have said what signs he saw in the Master's face, but he had known Chugren for many years. And he saw now that Chugren's hesitant wordings didn't come from a dulled brain. The Master was sober for the first time in Dahano's experience. He sounded, instead, like a child who's not yet sure of all his words.

Dahano's eyes widened. Chugren glanced at him sharply as the Master saw what he knew. Nevertheless, Dahano put it in words:

"You aren't Chugren," he whispered.

The Master's expression was mixed. "You're right," he admitted in a low voice. He looked around with a rueful lift to the corners of his mouth. "I see no one else has realized that. I'd appreciate it if you continued to keep your voice down." The look in his eyes was now both discomfited and unmistakably friendly.

Dahano nodded automatically. He and Chugren stood silently looking at each other while his brain caught up with its knowledge.

Dahano was not a person to go rushing forward into things he understood imperfectly. "Would the Master condescend to explain?" he asked finally, carefully.

Chugren nodded. "I think I'd better. I think it might be a good idea, now I've met you. And we might as well start off right—I'm not your master, and don't want to be."

"Will you come to my house with me?" Chugren nodded. Dahano turned and motioned the other villagers out into the fields. As the crowd broke up and drifted out of the square, glancing curiously at the Master and the Headman, Chugren followed Dahano toward his hut. Gulegath brushed by them with a pale look at the Master, and then they were in the hut, and Dahano took a breath. "You don't want to be our Master?" His hands were trembling a little bit.

"That's right," It was odd to see Chugren's features smile at him. "Your old Masters are gone for good. My men and I took their places last night. As soon as possible, we're going to set you people completely free."

Dahano squatted down on the floor. It was Chugren's voice and face, though nothing like Chugren's manner. He studied the person again. He saw Chugren, dressed in Chugren's usual loose, bright robe, with his dough coloring and pouched eyes. And under them was a sureness and firm self-possession quite different from the old Master's drunken, arbitrary peevishness. Dahano was not sure how all this could be—whether this was somehow a trick, or somehow an illusion, or where this false Chugren had come from. But he knew he would find out if he had patience.

"I saw lights in the sky last night. Was that you?"

Chugren looked at him with respect. "You've got sharp eyes, Headman. We had to take the screen down for an instant so we could get through—but, still, I didn't think anyone would spot us."

"Screen?"

"I'd better start at the beginning." Chugren made chairs for them, and when they were both sitting, the Master leaned forward. "I wish I knew how much of this will come through. I've been trying to build up a vocabulary, but there are so many things we have and do that your people don't have words for."

Dahano was curious. How could that be? There was a word for everything he knew. It was possible there were words he hadn't learned—but, no words at all? He mulled the idea over and then put it away. There were more important things to busy himself with.

Chugren was still preoccupied with that problem. "I wish I could explain all this directly. That'd be even better. But that's out, too."

Dahano nodded. This part was understandable to him. "The Masters told us. Their minds are made differently from ours. They could not even see into ours clearly unless we were angry or excited."