The Enemy of My Enemy (17 page)

It was Hob Sarlamat who had set down next to them in the distant darkness, Sarlamat in a double-motor float large enough for all of them.

“Didn’t you bring a replacement?” Tonorosant asked, motioning to the empty place where the starting-cam had been.

He shook his head. “I left before we got. your signal. In fact, I left as soon as that,” he indicated the little box whose purpose was to guide them in making their landings at the proper places to test and drill, “as soon as that started sending erratically, and I realized that something was wrong.”

“So you’re in on this, too? — This scrape-and-drill levy, I mean.”

Sarlamat’s thin face twisted impatiently. “Do you think we can leave it all up to the sons of the Seven Signs? They’d get bored to death and drop it by the third day … . What happened?”

He listened, frowning, rubbing his eyes. At last he said, “At least let’s transfer the soil samples.” And that, for a while, was that. Later, in answer to questions about the body, he said that “it would have to keep till morning.” He would voice no notion as to what it all meant or could mean, but — “I think the two of you have earned a release from levy-duty for the present,” he said, as lights began to show with increasing frequency. “I’ll see to it.”

“ ‘Earned’ it? I should think we have, my father-in-law’s fanny, I must hope to Hell we’ve earned it — ”

But Sarlamat wasn’t finished. “One condition, though — Keep this quiet. All of this. Agreed?”

Tonorosant said he had a condition of his own. “Will you — Can you see to it, too, that the old Volanth and his wife aren’t bothered? — when the body is picked up? Or afterwards?”

His friend’s eyelids had dropped a bit and his mouth had set a bit, as though he had not cared for anyone else’s making conditions. But when he heard what the conditions were, a spasm of annoyance had passed over his face. “Of course, of course. Need you have bothered?”

Perhaps not, Tonorosant now thought. Nothing in the actions of Sarlamat and his associates had indicated that they would be likely to find pleasure in Tarnisi-style violence. He tried once again to concentrate on his book. If he hoped some day to be a planter and an island owner, it behooved him to begin to learn something more of the economics of the whole scene than the little he knew now.

He yawned, blinked, stretched. Wished that Atoral was there with him. The wish was not even erotic. He would like just to be next to her and to fall asleep in her arms. But she had finally whisked her sister away from the stuffy atmosphere of idealistic confusion in the old tulan’s home and was now occupied with setting the girl up in a town cottage of her own. Resolutely, he turned back to his book, jiggled the control. A moment later he was sitting bolt upright, swearing, pounding his fist upon his thigh.

He found Storiogath in the company of a rumpled and sullen-eyed lackland girl who left without a word even while he was apologizing for his hasty and unexpected entry. Stori cut short the further apologies prompted by this.

“Never mind, and in fact — just as well. Those double-L females are all the same, anyway. Very unsubtle. First they climb all over you and then afterwards they insist that you marry them. Marry! If I’d wanted to
marry
I could have stayed where I was, my nephew’s neurons, I must hope — so what is it brings you here all of a flurry? A
book?
What — feelthy pictures? No. So —
Insular Industrial Arboriculture —
now, what in the Hell?”

He subsided and watched as his companion of the previous day fitted the book-cartridge into the projector, dutifully reading each sentence as it proceeded up the screen towards oblivion. “ ‘Commerce-Lermencas,’ ” he said. “They don’t come much bigger, do they? But what — ”

“Be quiet and read on.”

Stori obediently closed his mouth, raised his eyebrows.

In a stifled voice, Stori said, “My brother-in-law’s balls — ”

“You wondered if either the Lords or the Guardians were behind the Survey,” Tonorosant reminded him. “And, to tell you the truth, I was puzzled about that, too. Well, now we know. It’s neither. And we not only know who
isn’t
.

“We know who
is
.”

The rest of the page lacked the shock value of that one paragraph, but it was nonetheless informative.

Stori said, “But that wasn’t oron-tree country.”

“No, it isn’t. That’s beside the point. Which is, that that country — and I suppose, sooner or later, most of Tarnis — is being readied for factory-type agriculture. There are other crops beside oron-nut oil. We know who is behind the survey. The Craftsmen. And we also know — now — who is behind the Craftsmen.”

“Commerce-Lermencas. Which means Lermencas itself … ” Stori mused. “Which means … all kinds of things. Who’s going to supply that ‘well-regulated labor force’ the book talks about, do you suppose?”

“Oh, Commerce-L. is going to supply the regulation, you may be sure of that. As for the labor, well, I guess that’s where the Volanth come in.”

“
Pshwew
. … The poor hairy lack-lucks. No more piddling along at their own pace, with now and then a pleasant pause to play the he and she game. Too bad. Too bad.”

But Tonorosant didn’t think it was too bad at all. He wasn’t at all sure but what the bad might be outweighed by the good. Stori was hardly taking a realistic view of the scene. There was nothing Arcadianly picturesque in the life the Volanth led. They toiled to set up fish-weirs … along came a boat and knocked them down, just for fun. They slaved to make their crops, gather resin, cut and fashion timber … along came a little war which was still big enough to steal most of their surplus and spread murder and rape. This was the way things had been and as long as the Tarnisi stayed on top, it seemed, this was the way things would always be.

“And you think that the Craftsmen have been setting this up all along, this whole program of changing peoples’ bodies and giving them additional minds, planting them here and there where we can be of the most use to them, mixing in local politics — all of this, to help the Volanth?” Stori’s whole stocky body expressed his complete scepticism.

Tonorosant gave a one-sided smile. “Of course not. The Craftsmen, which is to say the Lermencasi, it seems, are completely selfish. But their selfishness is a modern one, it doesn’t reek of blood and cruelty like the selfishness of the Tarnisi. The Volanth could hardly be worse off, working for wages on huge, supervised management-farms, than they are now. Keep romance out of this. It doesn’t belong here, it’s a lie. The truth is inescapable: the Volanth would be much better off. Furthermore, they won’t remain just laborers forever. The Lermencasi are practical. They’ll set up schools. Once you start that process, there’s no way to stop it. First, some Volanth will be trained to perform minor tasks. And, gradually, by the usual sort of reverse gravity, others will begin drifting upwards. Lermencas is part of the modern world; Tarnis isn’t. The Volanth aren’t. But they are going to become part of it, from now on. And eventually, either with Lermencasi help or without it, the Volanth are going to have what they ought to have: a share in running their own country.”

Stori nodded, mused a moment. Shrugged. “Well, I don’t begrudge it to them, my aunt’s navel, I must hope. If the Craftsmen want to give me a job running a sanitary nut-farm and teaching the Volanth not to blow their noses with their fingers, it’s fine with me. There’s just one or two minor details, though. Agreed, out in Volanth country, the Tarnisi are rogues. But most of the time they’re not there, they’re here. And here they’re rather pleasant people. Charming, gracious. If we didn’t all think so, we wouldn’t have come here. The obvious question is: What’s going to become of the Tarnisi? Aren’t they entitled to have a share in running their own country, too?”

Tonorosant grimaced, began walking up and down the room, pulling his fingers. After a while he said, almost grudgingly, “That’s the big bump in the road. Ideally, the job of moving into the real world is one they ought to be doing themselves. But they are never going to do it. They can submit to being dragged along into it — or they can resist. Either way, they won’t like it. Naturally. I suppose that no one thing is going to happen to all of them. Some, I suppose, will be pensioned off to just flit around being decorative: the Lermencasi are bound to develop the tourist industry; as of now it doesn’t exist. Some — damned few, I suppose — will manage to adjust and fit into the action. More of them in the next generation, inevitably.

“But … as for the others … the ones who’d have a fit if anyone who lacks the Seven Signs outclassed them … the ones who can’t even lead a normal sex life without regular bouts of an abnormal sex life at the expense of others — those will go under. They must go under. I don’t see that there’s any other way.

“No, no. I just don’t see that there’s any other way.”

• • •

And in the darkness Atoral moved closer and put her arm around him. He kissed her shoulder. She said, into his ear, “Is everyone upset these days? My sister was bound to become upset and my father has always been upset. But you, Tonoro? There was a time when you, at least, were not upset. What is this disturbing spirit which is in you?”

“How do you know that I’m upset?”

“ ‘
How do I know?’
Ah, Tonoro! Oh — it’s not as bad as it was after you returned from levy, and that it never will be, I must hope … . But you sigh all night and you turn all night and you seldom smile. And I know that it is not me.”

“Ah, no! And it will never be you, I must hope!”

He returned her impulsive embrace, then her caress of a moment earlier. His lips found hers in the darkness. Their lips moved, but their hands moved more. And then their bodies. Later, “she listened through his skin to his slowing heart,” as an ancient poet had written. Marvelously, for the moment, at peace, he soon slipped away into sleep. He. But not she.

Such peace, however, does not last forever, and while it may diminish other troubles, it cannot abolish them.

It was their custom that, when they were together, they never were always together. “Thus we shall avoid being bored with one another, I must hope,” she’d said. Now in the morning she had her self-appointed task — planting several slips and saplings which she had brought from her golden garden; it was her intention to create one for him in a tiny corner of his own garden to remind him of her when she was not there. So her own morning was to be taken up with something she wanted to do and the doing of which would make her happy. But for him — ? There was nothing, he found, that he then desired doing. The thought of happiness seemed very far away.

At first he had been happy here in Tarnis merely realizing aspects of his dreams about the land and people. Before this and besides this and even after this, there were his hopes and plans for the future to which Tarnis was nothing more than a gorgeous stepping-stone. The dream had become a familiar reality and it had not been enough, and that hoped-for future he had seen as worthless because selfish: a landscape with only one figure, and more: the gorgeous stepping-stone was stained in blood. So he had pledged himself to wash it clean. Which meant doing as the Craftsmen bid. One might have thought his bitter years in Pemath would have made him suspicious enough forever, so that he would trust no man’s motives. And yet, somehow, in this case, it had not. He had made no effort to look behind the Craftsmen … despite the words of Mothiosant.
There are some debts which are never paid
. Well, now he had looked. And he had found, oh, not a demon, nor anything as picturesque as that; he had found behind them the hugeness of the cluster of huge corporations known collectively as Commerce-Lermencas. It did not now much surprise him. Even if the physical and psychical surgery and all the cloak and scalpel work of the Craftsmen by now could pay for itself, it would have taken something the size of Commerce-L. or the government of great Lermencas itself to have set it up in the first place.

But all of that made no matter now. He was more than resigned to what the Lermencasi intended; he favored their intention. If the aristocracy of Tarnis must fall, then let it fall. It would fall without much blood — perhaps without any blood at all. But the prospect of the moderate and efficient Lermencasi rule could not inspire with enthusiasm. His mood now alternated between a nervous agitation which had no visible cause and a listlessness which had no visible cure. Thus he paced about his grounds or sank down upon the grass and stared at the water. A time before, beset with heaviness of heart, he had tried to swim his troubles away, naked flesh in naked water, often so chill and cold in the misty morning that it burned like fire.
You like to swim … . Yes
. … The words now rolled slowly through his mind, and bore associations of bafflement and unpleasantness. Who had said it? What was the occasion?