The Loafers of Refuge (22 page)

Similik had been twenty feet away and slightly behind Harvey Phillips when the accident occurred. There was no
possibility that he had somehow contrived to trip the horse, for the accident occurred in full view of the crowd waiting at the finish line. Nothing would have come from the event had not a young Loafer, disgruntled at losing his money, accused Similik in public of having used his power as a pre-initiate trainee in Controlling to force the horse to stumble. This had been one of the most heavily bet races of the year and Harvey Phillips’ backers decided to accuse Similik of cheating, in hopes of having the race decision set aside. Surprisingly, the unhappy Loafer who had lost his money had testified, without the slightest indication that he was lying, that he had felt a surge of mental projection as the horse stumbled and went down. He had not been able to place the specific spot where the power appeared or identify the projector, and Similik vigorously denied that he had cheated in any form. Examination of the area where the horse stumbled disclosed no possible reason for the fall, however, and the Security Section felt there was enough evidence to justify bringing Similik to trial. The trial had lasted three days and it was obvious that Security’s case was weak indeed. The only witness who appeared on their side and carried any weight at all was the accusing young Loafer, and he had admitted to not being positive that the force he felt was being used in the immediate area. There was no possible verdict but acquittal.

The fact that Nyyub had died of a sudden and severe illness two months ago had not helped matters, Timmy, heir to the succession, was still gone on havasid and while awaiting his return or news of his death the tribe had chosen Himkera, Similik’s grandfather, as temporary Head Councillor. The old man had vigorously defended his daughter’s child, including threatening to forcibly remove him from confinement and flee into the deep woods with the whole tribe if the Earth courts found him guilty. But there was very little chance of that. He had been accused of a crime virtually impossible to prove.

There was a stirring in the packed room as the prosecutor sat down and the defence attorney rose to present his final arguments. Like most professional people lawyer Alex Wilson was a farmer first and lawyer second; the only full-time professional
men in the community were the two doctors, and they would have farmed also if time allowed. But Wilson had been an excellent lawyer on Earth and his services were much sought on Refuge. He paced the narrow walk in front of the bench where the jury sat, eyes on the floor, hands behind his back, for perhaps a full minute, while the room waited breathlessly. As he straightened, turned and faced the jury a strong clear voice said from the back of the room, “A defence will not be necessary.”

The hush was broken by the sudden turn of hundreds of necks, the sudden whispers torn from many throats. Carey heard a deep, sharp intake of breath by Doreen, and then he located the tall figure striding down the aisle at the rear of the room, walking with the long even stride of a Loafer. He was thin almost to the point of emaciation and his wirtl-cloak was stained and torn, discoloured with the dirt of many lands. Even so the figure would have been easily recognizable as Timmy except for the change in bearing and manner, the imperious way he held his head, the sense of power and strength that seemed to emanate from him. And yet it was Timmy, though so changed that even Doreen had taken a second to recognize him.

Timmy had been one of the better known Loafers in the Earth community and was recognized by almost all the old-timers in the room. And with his recognition came the realization that he was automatically the new Council Head and ruler of the tribe. This was proven on the instant by old Himkera, who got hastily to his feet and offered the ancient, traditional salute by which the Lindorn Loafers greeted a new leader, a salute he received only once in his lifetime. It meant nothing to most of the Earthpeople gathered there, but Carey and Doreen, and the sprinkling of Loafers in the crowd, recognized its significance.

Timmy strode to the front of the room in a heavy, weighted silence, passed through the open space separating the audience from the officials and marched to the bench where Similik sat. The young Loafer watched him come with eyes growing wider each instant, and when Timmy stood before him he bounded to his feet and repeated the salute his grandfather
had already proffered, the acknowledgement of fealty, and love.

Speaking more to herself than Carey, her eyes fixed on Timmy’s sombre face, Doreen said softly, “So—so changed! So dignified, and grown, and hard and strong! He—he almost frightens me!”

Carey nodded in mute acknowledgement. Timmy had left a gentle, shy, retiring young man, of modest attitude and reticent habits. Before them stood a king, and his voice was harsh and strong when he said, “Similik, I offer you greetings, and acknowledge the salute of leadership. And I charge you now to answer me one question, and let that one answer be from all the truth that lives within you. Did you cause Harvey Phillips’ horse to stumble in that race?”

There was a stricken silence. The Security Section man in charge of order in the court had started forward to expel Timmy from the area reserved for officials, but now he too stopped and stood motionless, gripped by the living drama before him. Similik squirmed uncomfortably, lowered his eyes, dragged them up again as though compelled by a power outside himself, and stared his Chief in the face. Timmy waited patiently, his dark, expressionless eyes never leaving the younger man’s countenance. And then Similik’s face twisted, bright tears glimmering behind the long lashes, and in a low and anguished voice he answered, “Yes.”

The taut, electric silence was broken on the instant by a babble of talk, and Jurist Cavanaugh pounded vainly for order. The reporter for the new local paper left the room on the run, and a few others followed to be first with the news outside. And then the irate jurist ordered the entire room to be cleared and the security men started herding people out of the door. Carey, looking anxiously about, finally caught the eye of Varinov English and motioned that he wanted to stay.

The judge had called the two lawyers to the bench and they were engaged in a hurried debate. Carey heard the words “plea to guilty” and knew what the results would be. Young Similik was headed for many years of involuntary government labour.

Timmy had been surrounded by an anxious, questioning crowd of Loafers, but they parted to let Carey and Doreen through. For the first time in a year Doreen looked in the face of the man she loved and found, strangely, that she had nothing to say.

Timmy’s thin face twisted into a wry and bitter smile. He reached with one bony hand, laid it on her shoulder. “My people will welcome me home tonight with a feast. Will you and Carey come?”

She could only nod, in a mute agony of feeling that was combined of pain and joy, sorrow and surpassing happiness, and then the tears flooded her eyes and the first wrenching sob came tearing out of her chest. She collapsed in a weeping, sobbing heap in Carey’s arms; and he led her gently back to her seat.

When she looked up, some moments later, smiling through the still trickling tears, Timmy and the Loafers were gone.

There was laughter, and singing, and food in plenty spread on shell platters lying around the big fire in the central clearing. A small group of young boys vied in a game of hide-and-seek, where the seeker walked always with his eyes closed and the sought ones could not move, but could project images of themselves as trees, waquil-fruits, or anything they chose in an effort to fool the lad who was “it”. The people were celebrating the return of their hereditary leader, and what was more important to most of them, the return of a friend.

Doreen sat comfortably between two big men, Sam Harper and Brian Jacobs. Jacobs was slowly teaching his wife, the former Michele Kaymar, the art of Controlling. Cassie Harper, surrounded by a small crowd of her own daughters, was breastfeeding her new son, the natural act going completely unnoticed among the nude Loafers. Marge Sheldon held her own baby on her lap and fed him soft bits of fruit while talking animatedly with the other women. Marge had learned very fast and would soon be ready for her initiation. Cassie had no desire to learn the art of Controlling but was helping Sam
with his slow progress in every way she could. Carey Sheldon was engaged in a lively discussion with two of the elders of the tribe, standing slightly out of the mainstream of activity and talking earnestly. This was a congenial crowd and they were enjoying themselves in a way people sitting hypnotized in front of their tri-D sets would never understand.

There was no organized programme, but the main event occurred when Timmy appeared unnoticed at the edge of the crowd and gave a low-voiced greeting to those of the people who saw him. The many activities of the people gradually quieted as Timmy walked slowly to the centre of the clearing, and by the time he stopped and turned to face his people there was virtual silence.

Timmy let the silence grow, standing tall and erect in the flickering firelight. His thin face was more peaceful than it had seemed earlier in the courtroom, but withdrawn and sad. He was not wearing his cloak, and beneath the rich covering of hair his body was bone-thin and tendon-hard, all spare flesh eroded away by weeks and months of constant effort. Still, the loss of flesh seemed to have strengthened, not weakened him. What was left was all muscle, sinew and bone, hard and strong.

“I give greetings to my people and my friends, and my heart is glad to be once more among you,” said Timmy in his clear, carrying voice. He slowly bent his gaze around the assemblage, lingering for a moment on the faces of Carey and Doreen. “And yet it grieves me to report that my havasid has brought nothing but pain, and with the pain, grief. For the knowledge of our people is dying, and with its dying, so ends the control of nature as a way of life. And I say this must not be!”

Doreen felt her heart pushing its way up into her throat, choking her, and she seized the arm of Sam Harper and clung hard, seeking comfort. Timmy went on relentlessly, the words clarion-clear and unendurable. “I have found that wherever the Earthpeople have touched the Loafer way of life, wherever the two races meet and mingle, inevitably the Loafer loses his identity, his reason for being, his pride in his race. Without intent, without purpose, the mighty Earthman
destroys, touching with fingers of steel a method of living as fragile as spider-silk, and as easily torn. Our people are being absorbed into the life of the Earthman and to him it is no more than a passing wonder, a small thing of no significance. Yet it is our death!”

There was a brief but appreciable silence. Timmy resumed, “I am not willing to be eaten alive. We are too close to discovering the hidden powers of our own minds, to reaching those depths within ourselves towards which we have long striven. Two children of our tribe have remarkable powers now, and other children to come may be greater still. I would live to see those children grow up and develop to the fullest, learning all we lesser ones can teach them. Within the past year I have greatly increased my own powers, so much so that I can now easily talk-without-sound with my niece from a great distance. I feel that many more of our tribe can learn to do this, that we may yet grow greater than the Earth-people, in a way they can only dimly see and could not possibly understand.

“Yet I will not compel anyone to do that which he wants not to do, and so will lay no rule of law upon my people. I choose to leave this old home of ours, to go into the thickest and loneliest part of the forest, to learn anew how to live without benefit of steel tool or weapon of death. I ask for the company of all those who believe in our way of life. When the Earth-men finally reach us—as they will penetrate the last hidden heart of this planet, in due time—we will know our answer, and can then perhaps plot our own course, free of their influence.”

“I ask that this Earthwoman be allowed to go with you,” said a proud, happy voice, and to her own amazement Doreen found herself walking forward to stand, suddenly abashed at her temerity, in front of Timmy.

He reached with two long arms, placed hairy hands on her slim shoulders, stared into her suddenly downcast face. “I wish that it could be,” Timmy said softly, and Doreen felt her world crashing around her ears.

Timmy released her, then turned and beckoned. From the edge of the crowd a young girl came slowly and hesitantly forward.
She was very pretty in the Loafer fashion, her long brown hair framing a face of delicate lines and precisely sculptured ovals. Her most distinguishing feature, though, was a series of odd golden markings scattered in profusion through her thick brown body hair.

She took her stand beside Timmy and smiled with shy friendliness at Doreen. Doreen stared back, numbly. Timmy placed a protective arm around the young girl’s shoulders and said, “Doreen, this is Bilejah, daughter of Brixta and my intended wife.”

Doreen took a deep, quivering breath, made the greatest effort of her life and controlled the sudden raw hate that shuddered and stormed within her, controlled and held it inside, squeezed and folded and tucked it away deep within herself, and her voice was taut but restrained when she asked, “Why, Timmy? I said I couldn’t promise to wait, but wait I did. Why?”

Doreen felt the comforting presence of Carey at her side, his bulk looming large in the firelight. She also sensed that both Sam and Brian and come forward, and stood confronting Timmy as though in menace and anger. And yet she knew full well they could only confront him with pain and sorrow, and the knowledge he had caused another an unhappiness not to be borne.

“Why, Doreen, girl-whom-I-have-loved? Why do I cause you this pain? Why do I alienate my friends, strain hard on the bonds of friendship that have tied your brother and I together since childhood? Because I must. Because I am of the same bloodline that produced Micka and Sanda, and my children conceivably could be as great as they. Because I know now what I already felt might be true, that Loafer and Earthman can never make a child and our marriage would have been barren.”