Chad Oliver

CARAVANS UNLIMITED:

STABILITY

THE great lightship of Caravans, Unlimited came out of the gray wastes of not-space with a shuddering wrench. The ship steadied, at home again in the black velvet of the universe in which it had been born. The symbol on its bow, a laden camel, seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. The system of Capella was almost dangerously close; the tremendous yellow primary, sixteen times the size of the sun that earth knew, blazed against the faint light of more distant stars.

Tucker Olton released himself from his chair clamps and managed a sickly smile. He had never gotten used to the dizzy sensation of returning to normal space. He tried to cover up his discomfort by firing questions at his companion.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Your schemes usually make at least a crazy kind of sense to me, but not this time. Exactly what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Alex Porvenir salvaged what he could of his spilled drink and added enough Scotch to make it respectable. “I think it best if I spare you the arcane details on this one. Just do what I tell you and then you can always plead ignorance when everything blows up in my face.”

“Don’t be avuncular, Alex. It’s my responsibility, too, and my job. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

Alex looked at the younger man, his brown eyes narrowed. He ran a lean, strong hand through his graying hair. “Don’t you trust me, Tuck?”

“Of course, I trust you. That’s not the point. You aren’t trusting me and I don’t understand why. Your plan won’t work and you know it. So what’s the deal?”

“Think the old man is losing his grip, do you?”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t think that. Dammit, we’ve known each other for a long time. We’ve worked on a lot of projects together. We’ve had our disagreements, but I’ve never seen an operation like this one. It’s—well, it’s just plain silly. You must have your reasons. I merely want to know what they are.”

Alex put down his drink and fired up an exceptionally foul pipe. “I have my reasons, yes. I told you why I wanted to leave you out of the planning stage, and I wasn’t kidding. My intention is to violate a sacred company directive—I’m disobeying orders, if you want to put it that way. If my plan doesn’t work, that’s my hard luck. If you weren’t involved in it, you’re in the clear. Still want to know everything?”

“I want to know something.”

“Okay. Just to set your feverish brain to rest. I’m very concerned about the Maburu; I’ve always admired them a great deal. I know their life has been tough, but if I could have picked the person I wanted to be I just might have been one of the Maburu. The atavistic streak in me, I suppose—I happen to like hunters.”

“But that’s exactly what the company wants you to do. We’re trying to preserve the Maburu culture. …”

“Are we?” Alex blew out a cloud of acrid blue smoke. “Maybe it all depends on how we define our terms. I’m worried about what always worries me in these situations—this habit we have of posing as Omnipotent Beings, messing around with other people’s lives. Caravans has made mistakes before, and so have we as individuals. We don’t know everything. It’s all too easy to allow our own interests to shade the decisions we make. Caravans wants those horns; they’ve been a profitable product for us. When you cut through the high-sounding verbiage about saving the integrity of the Maburu lifeway, what they really want me to do is to see to it that those horns keep coming. I’m not convinced. Maybe that’s the best way to proceed, maybe not. I promise you that what I want to try is not unethical. It will violate no laws. Beyond that, I think it’ll work—that is, it will attain the basic objectives of the Caravans planners. I’m just not going to do precisely what I was told to do. Let me ask you a question. Will my plan result in any possible harm to the Maburu?”

“I don’t know what your plan really is.”

“So I’ll rephrase my question. You do know what action I am going to take. That’s what you’ve been moaning and groaning about. Will it hurt them in any way?”

“No. I don’t see-”

“Then can’t we leave it at that? Do me a favor this once and don’t press me for details. You’ll know soon enough.”

Tucker Olton sighed. “Okay, Alex. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

Alex Porvenir smiled and drained his drink. “So do I, friend. So do I.”

The great yellow sun was low in the western sky, burning redly through banks of rain-swollen clouds. Some of the fierce heat had gone out of the day. The winds were beginning, gently now, and they carried a hint of cooling moisture. The plains grasses stirred. Even the thorny flat-topped trees swayed a little, showing signs of life after the searing afternoon heat.

A small herd of about twenty bokix became active in a clump of thick brush. The animals ventured out of the shade for the first time in many hours. They milled about aimlessly, shaking off the torpor of the hot afternoon, sampling the scorched but sweet-smelling grasses.

A large buck lifted his horn-crowned head to taste the wind. He was a splendid creature, his coat delicately striped with tan and white, his liquid eyes clear, his exquisite horns golden and sweeping back over his powerful shoulders. The antelopelike bokix, somewhat resembling the kudu or oryx of ancient earth, were all big animals but the buck was truly exceptional. He must have weighed close to five hundred pounds.

The buck tossed his horns and snorted. He was thirsty after the heat of the afternoon. He wasted no time on the grass. He moved off with a long, easy stride, headed for water.

The other bokix followed his lead. The herd strung out almost in single file, walking steadily into the wind.

Old, old laws, as old as complex life on the land. Where there are grassy plains, there will be animals that feed on the grasses. Where there are grass-eaters, there will be hunters to prey upon the herds. Lithe, fast killers with sharp claws and teeth. Scavenger packs to snarl over the carcasses. Birds to peck and rip and scratch at the meat-shredded bones.

And, sometimes, men. A special kind of men. Tireless, strong, patient men, their eyes narrowed against the sun and wind. Men who wait and stalk and wait again. Men who know about arrows and poisons and traps. Men who know the land and the animals that live upon the land. Men who know that animals must drink after the heat of the day. Men who know where the springs bubble and the rivers flow…

Hunters.

Waiting.

These, then, are the Maburu.

Hard men; there are no fat Maburu. The men leave their crude brush shelters and seek the herds. The hunting bands are small, six or seven men moving like shadows along dusty and almost invisible trails. The men know their jobs, but foot hunting is slow. Often, they are gone for many days before they make a big-enough kill to justify returning to camp.

The women and the few old men stay fairly close to the shelters. The women fan out, carrying their babies in cape slings, searching for edible roots and berries and the wild succulent melons that grow along the ground vines. They actually supply most of the food; the Maburu could not live on meat alone in their tough world. The women pick up firewood along the way, and when they return to the shelters they build little fires and sit and wait and stare into the gathering darkness…

The older children—there are not many in any one of the scattered Maburu groups—play the games they have always played. The boys build snares and go after lizards and snakes and small rodents with their scaled-down bows and arrows. The girls help with the babies and dig roots out of the hard-packed ground and weave little baskets for berries.

It is not an easy life. There is seldom enough food for a full belly. There are few luxuries. There is sickness that strikes suddenly. There are children who whimper and die, and there are men who do not return… .

But there is more than this.

There are times when the big kill is made and there is meat for everyone. It has a good smell with the juices dripping into the fires. You can eat until you hurt, and rest, and eat again. You can sleep a long sleep and dream your dreams and be secure in the knowledge that there will be more food tomorrow. There are times for dancing, times for singing happy songs. There are times for jokes, and times when a man and a woman can lie together in the warm huts with the rains drumming on the thatch. There are times when the sky traders come, taking away the golden horns of the bokix and leaving in return wonderful things that give days of enchantment. There are times when a boy comes of age, and you can see pride in his eyes, and it is good to be a Maburu. There are time when a child is born, and you know that the Maburu will go on forever.

Now, while the small band of Maburu hunters deploys in the afternoon sun, dividing along the stream bank and leaving an open corridor so that the bokix will not catch their scent, there are other Maburu.

That is the problem.

They are not far away, these new Maburu. A hard journey of two days, that is all. Looked at in another way, though, the new Maburu are distant indeed.

They are different, and have become more different within the span of two generations.

There are many, while the old Maburu were few. They live close together. Their houses are solidly made, and they do not move them with the seasons.

The men no longer hunt. They spend the long afternoons in councils around great calabashes of sugar-stalk beer. It is a party of sorts, but there is work to be done and they take it seriously. The councils are forums. There are many legal cases to be heard and decided. Boundary disputes, and thefts, and endless details of bride wealth payments.

And witchcraft. There are too many witches… .

The doctors are busy indeed. It is difficult to combat the witches. The doctors must examine the victims. They know that illness is caused by witches, of course, but that is not specific enough. They must speak with the spirits, calling to them on their ornately carved bows with the special strings and the sounding gourds that resonate when struck. And they must consult the flashing Wiloto, which can signal answers that only they can read. Then they know the witch that is responsible, and what she has done. That is the diagnosis. The treatments are complicated and expensive, and sometimes they fail. Then the witch must be confronted directly, and that is a dangerous business.

The women, too, are busy. They work hard, harder than in the old way. There is clearing and the planting and the weeding and the harvesting in a never-ending cycle. There are the great baskets to weave, some of them as tall as the woman herself; the baskets have intricate designs of many colors and they are used to store the foods in stilted storage huts where the rodents cannot get at them. There is more than one wife in a house now, and that means trouble. It is small wonder that some of the women turn to witchcraft and use their ancient power. It gives release of a sort.

The new Maburu have discovered agriculture. They do not know how remarkable this is. They know only that they can grow more food than they could ever find. They know only that it is easier to grow food than to hunt it—easier for the men, at any rate. They know only that now there is enough food so that people never have to go to sleep with empty bellies.

They know only that there are more Maburu, and they are not fools by any means. They know that there is strength in numbers. They can stay all their lives in one village instead of wandering the hard trails lean and hungry and shifting camps with the changing seasons. Their children have a better chance to survive; no longer must they fear becoming too attached to a baby that may be dead in a matter of days. Elders are not a rarity now and a man does not routinely face death when he is thirty.

They rather look down on their backward cousins, these new Maburu. They know that they have found a better way.

Who, after all, would spend his life tired and thirsty on the hunt, when he could sit back in the shade and sip his beer and relish the importance of savoring a good legal case?

Surely they are ignorant, those old Maburu…

The buck paused and lifted his head, his golden horns gleaming in the last rays of the setting sun. He sniffed the freshening wind. There was a faint scent that disturbed him. He hesitated, his white-flecked tail cocked with awareness.

It was the sweet wet smell of water that decided him. He moved again toward the stream.

The bokix herd was not walking now. The gait had shifted to a fast purposeful trot. Dust puffed up around them and behind them.

The buck reached the river first. He waded out in the cool clean water, enjoying the sensation of it. He paused again and froze for a moment, his nostrils quivering. Then he drank, and the herd drank with him.

The Maburu hunters struck. Swiftly, suddenly, soundlessly. Converging, three from upstream and three from down. The first arrows flew while the bokix were still in the water. The animals could not maneuver. They were easy targets.

When the shafts hit, the stricken bokix did not simply roll over in the water and die. They were big animals, and it took a lucky arrow to drop a bokix in his tracks. The herd exploded, thrashing and snorting. There was whirling confusion, with golden horns flashing and red blood mixing with the muddied water.

Most of the animals charged for the bank they had just left, heedless now of the hunters who waited for them. They heaved themselves out of the water and took off at a dead run for the cover of the brushy thickets. They ignored the arrows that pricked at their hides.

The great buck was unhit. Part of the reason was that the hunters were primarily after meat, and the cows were better eating. But the hunters had seen his fantastic horns, and more than one arrow had come his way. It was more than luck. The animal had not attained his size and age without wisdom and cunning. He had survived in a tough world. Even before the arrows had flown, some instinct had warned him. He began to swim away, making for the opposite bank. He was out of effective range before most of the rest of the herd had fully reacted.

The hunters were jubilant. The stalk had been perfect, the arrows true. At least seven of the bokix had been severely pierced. It was an incredible number.

But the hard part was just beginning.

The poison would work, yes; it was fresh and strong and smeared thickly on the foreshafts of the arrows. But the poison worked slowly on large animals. It had to get into the bloodstream, and an animal as big as a bokix would take time to die.

And the bokix would not conveniently stay together, trot back to camp, and collapse. They would split up, go in all directions.

They must be followed along unpredictable trails. They must be found when they weakened, found and guarded. There were other animals who would welcome the Maburu kill, either to bring down the dazed bokix or to scavenge the dead meat. The bokix must be butchered and the flesh cut into long strips to dry; otherwise, the meat was too heavy to carry. Someone had to notify the camp so that the women and children could shoulder some of the burden.

And night was falling. It was no simple matter to track a wounded animal through the darkness.

Still, it had been a great hunt.

It would be good to sit around the fires and tell about it, when and if they got home.

One day, it would be good to remember.

The Caravans lightship drifted in silent orbit, far above the world of Capella VII. It was a creature of the deep, and docked on the shores of that strange space-sea only under the most exceptional circumstances.

The spherical landing shuttles came down out of space, whispering through the atmosphere. There were six of them, floating down like white bubbles through the glare of the warm sunshine.

Many times the traders had come thus to the Maburu, seeking the golden horns of the bokix. The horns were fabulous, natural works of art, but what made them valuable enough to transport was the elementary fact that wild animals were extinct on the human ant hill that was earth. The horns of the bokix were priceless exactly because there was nothing like them at home. The value of a status symbol varies inversely with the supply.

There was no need for the traders to conceal their movements. They had nothing to fear from the Maburu, and indeed they wanted to be seen.

But this time they had not come to trade.

This time their task was different…

Emerging from the landing shuttles, the traders greeted the shouting Maburu cordially. There was real friendliness on both sides; they welcomed each other. It was a profitable relationship for both of them, of course, but it was more than that. The traders generally liked and admired the Maburu, and the Maburu had received only good things from the traders. You tend to like people who bring you fine presents.

The traders dealt only with the hunting Maburu. The farmers had no horns.

It takes time to trade, whether you are dealing with primitive or civilized peoples. You don’t just dump out your goodies, collect your horns, and leave. That is an insult. No, there must be feasting and songs and pleasant conversation that only lightly touches upon the purpose of the visit… .

Days went by before the shuttles were loaded, and still the traders were not through. Trade was not the primary purpose of this visit to the Maburu, although they could not afford to ignore the opportunity to obtain more of the golden horns. The logistics of space travel made it necessary to transact business whenever it was possible. Time spent in space was dead time; it cut into profits.

The traders did not understand the rest of their job at all. Alex Porvenir had asked them to do many peculiar things in his time, but nothing like this. Still, the man knew his job—and his word was law in field operations.

They could not explain to the Maburu. They knew nothing to explain. They just did what they had been told to do.

The traders grumpily shouldered axes and proceeded to a nearby forest. While the Maburu watched and wondered, they selected tall trees and began to chop them down. When they got one down, they trimmed off the branches and converted the trees into long poles. The poles varied in length between fifteen and twenty feet. They were so heavy that it took ten men to haul them from one place to another.

The Maburu thought it was great fun. Besides, there would be firewood for many months.

The traders were much less amused. They could have done the job quickly with the proper energy equipment, of course, but Alex Porvenir had specified axes, picks, and shovels. No doubt it had something to do with the laws governing the introduction of sophisticated technology into undeveloped areas. Just the same, he wasn’t doing any chopping or hauling.

It seemed to take forever. The men were not in condition for this kind of work. They tired easily in the burning sun. Their hands blistered. Their backs ached.

It took them a solid eight days to cut one hundred poles.

None of them noticed a single landing shuttle that drifted down out of the sky on the fourth day. It did not come down in the usual place. It landed on the edge of one of the new agricultural villages, and one man got out.

If they had noticed, the traders were past caring.

In the manner of men saddled with a difficult and senseless job, they blanked their minds and just tried to get through it. Alex Porvenir would not have won any popularity contests with them. They hated him, they hated Caravans, and before long they hated the Maburu, who finally got bored and left them alone.

When they had cut and trimmed one hundred poles, they dragged and rolled them to the clearing that Porvenir had designated on his map. That took four more days.

Then the real fun began.

The weary and angry men started to dig holes. Deep, deep holes. One hundred of them, arranged in a precise and complicated pattern. The ground was hard and dry and did not yield easily. It was like chipping away at rock.

It did not console them any to remember that the ship could have drilled the holes in a matter of seconds.

The only pleasure they had was in thinking of what all this was costing Caravans. Every hour that ship remained in orbit was lost time. They already had the horns.

It took seven days to dig the holes, and they were not pleasant days. The traders muttered sourly about mutiny, and they were only half-joking. But they were too well paid to take the idea seriously. They were also too damned tired.

Besides, they still had to get the poles into the holes.

By the time they had rigged up some crude hoists and started to plant the forest of poles in the clearing, they figured they were trapped in some madman’s nightmare.

Alex Porvenir’s, to be specific.

Poles in the holes. They ran through all the possible variations on that one, most of them obscene.

Mostly, they just wanted it all to be over.

Alex Porvenir stepped out of the shuttle and looked at the village.

He was not unmindful of the crew still chopping down trees in the forest near the camp of the old Maburu. He knew that it was a tough, dirty job. He knew that the skilled men would resent it. Still, it was accomplishing its purpose. His plan was by no means as bizarre as it seemed.

He put the crew out of his mind. His task was here, with the new Maburu. It was all up to him now. If he failed, much more would be lost than a single staple in the interstellar trade. The Maburu themselves were on the line.

Alex smiled. He welcomed the challenge. It was good to get out of the ship, get away from nagging doubts. It was good to feel the land under his feet and the warm sun on his face. It was good to sniff the smells of living things, carried on the wind.

The land and the sky and the sun always restored Alex. Both his mind and his body told him that man was still an animal. He never felt really comfortable sealed in a ship or trapped in the sterile towers of a city. He needed the ancient things.

He was consciously aware of the pleasure he took in functioning as a field anthropologist again, getting ready to do a job he knew he could do well. Scanners and computers were fine and necessary, but sometimes a man had to get out and stick his nose in the dirt. Alex was interested in people. They were lots more fun than elegant abstractions.

He stood in the open, not trying to hide. He lit his pipe, savoring it for a change. He studied the scene before him. He was on a small rise, and his view was clear. He could see a group of Maburu already moving toward him.

The new Maburu. How incredible they were, and how little aware of their own accomplishment!

There was the neat and compact village, with the solid houses and the thick roof thatches yellow-brown in the sun. It was not a small village; Alex estimated that it held at least two thousand people. That meant a population density perhaps fifty times higher than that of the hunting Maburu. There were the fields, radiating out from the village. Not all of them were in production; the ones closest to the village were mostly in fallow, as fresher and more distant land had to be cleared when the original fields played out. The Maburu had no livestock and thus no fertilizer; they did not know how to replenish the soil.

Alex could see, though, that the fields were interplanted. He could recognize four different kinds of plants growing side by side in each sprawling field. That was something.

Capella VII was a big planet, but it was very lightly inhabited. Much of it was water. There were whole continents that were devoid of men. There were other people besides the Maburu, of course, but not many. Man was still a rather rare animal on Capella VII. There was no other agriculture anywhere on the planet.

The Maburu had invented it. On earth it had taken man a good two million years to turn the same trick. If it had never happened, Alex would not be where he now was. Crops in the soil provided the roots from which all civilizations grew. Settled villages, states, cities, industry—yes, and space travel itself. It was a monumental accomplishment.

There was another side to the coin. More people meant more problems. Wars and social classes and stinking slums—the Maburu had much to look forward to. But that was a distant future, thousands of years away.

Farming was hell on hunters, too. Hunters need a lot of room, and their small populations cannot compete with organized farmers. There were no hunters left on earth. Ever since the Neolithic, the hunters had dwindled. They had retreated into deserts and arctic wastes, land nobody else wanted. And in time there was nowhere left to go… .

The hunting Maburu were already anachronisms, whether they knew it or not. The invention of agriculture had made them obsolete. In the long run, they were doomed. It did not matter how brave they were, or how admirable.

It did matter, perhaps, that Alex happened to like the old Maburu. It did matter that Caravans needed the old Maburu.

That was the new factor in the equation: Alex Porvenir and what he knew. He could preserve the old way, with a little luck. Those were his instructions. Those were also his inclinations.

He carefully knocked out his pipe and moved to greet the oncoming Maburu.

It was neither a true first-contact situation nor a simple matter of slipping into an established routine. The village Maburu did not know who Alex Porvenir was, of course, but they did know about the traders from the sky. They were not totally divorced from their hunting kinsmen; they were only separated from them by a journey of two days, and it was by no means unusual for a hunting family to drift over and join the farmers.

It was difficult, as it always was. Difficult and slow. It was complicated by the pressure of time. If Alex’s plan was going to work, it had to work quickly. He had to finish his job before those poles were set into the soil.

He had one thing going for him: He could speak the language, after a fashion. He had dealt with the old Maburu many times, and the language of the villagers had not been isolated long enough to change appreciably.

He did not feel that he was in any particular personal danger. The people had no reason to fear him, and he was experienced enough not to make stupid mistakes. On the other hand, he had to be careful. He did not really know these new Maburu. A thickly settled farming village was a far cry from an open hunting band.

A stranger would be studied by many eyes.

There would be whispers and suspicions, and the witches would finger their bones… .

Alex smiled and tried to look as inoffensive as possible. He jumped twice in greeting and clasped his hands.

“I come in peace,” he said.

The first hours were chaotic, as always. It was impossible for Alex to make any precise observations. It was all a confused blur of smells (greasy wood smoke staining the roof thatch, dry plants splitting in hot granaries, human dung smothered in clouds of flies), colors (faded red cloaks, dirty white feathers, a brilliant blue design on a huge basket, the hard brown of the trampled soil), and sounds (the jabber of too many voices, distant shouts, the creak of wood in the houses, the clacking of bows, the shuffling of naked feet).

He kept smiling, although his head was killing him. He tried to locate a child to make friends with; that was always a good move, but he never had the opportunity. The most he saw of children were round frightened eyes peering out of doorways.

He had hoped that there might be a chief of some sort; it would be easier to deal with a single man. But it rapidly became apparent that there was no chief. These people were acephalous, like so many village farmers. He would probably have to work through a council of elders, and that was always a mess.

And slow.

He smiled; he could not afford impatience. He allowed himself to be led. When he was offered food, he accepted. That was often the supreme test for an anthropologist; he had eaten some decidedly grim items in his time. The food given to him wasn’t bad, though—a calabash of hot grainy gruel topped with a thick savory sauce.

He asked for water and got it in another calabash. It was very warm and he could almost see the bugs in it. He drank it, anyway, adding a pill on the sly.

When the cooling darkness came, there was the inevitable dancing in a centrally located clearing. It seemed to Alex that this was a maxim among many peoples that he had known: when in doubt how to deal with a stranger, put on a dance.

It gave the visitor something to do.

It also stalled for time. It was the younger people who danced. The elders were free to cluster in groups beyond the firelight, talking and gesturing.

Alex knew that he was being closely observed. He was quite tired, but he kept a fascinated expression on his face. He was actually bored stiff; he had seen it all before, with every imaginable variation. The only aspect that intrigued him was the almost total lack of instrumental background. The Maburu had no drums, no rattles, no string or wind instruments. They simply clicked wooden blocks together to keep time.

The singing was something else again. The Maburu had always been a singing people; they had a flair for poetic imagery, and their mood songs had frequently intrigued the traders who heard them. The hunters sang lonely little songs as they wandered the trails, and their women sang sad laments around their tiny fires. When there was meat from a good kill, there were happy songs.

The songs he now heard were new songs with complex interweavings of rhythms and counter-melodies. They were sung both by the dancers and the audience. Alex recorded as many of them as he could. There might be something useful there.

His attention wandered despite his certain knowledge that he was under close scrutiny.

He was in a hurry, but there was nothing he could do.

In his weariness, he thought:

Again, a man in a village. I have seen so many of them, on so many different worlds. I see the correspondences, the parallels. That is my training. But every village is unique, and every person.

There are some things I can anticipate, predict.

There are other things that will surprise me—perhaps fatally.

I am forever an outsider, always on the fringes. I can try to understand, but I cannot truly participate. I cannot share.

I am alone here, alone in a crowd. I am isolated by what I am and what I know. I am cut off from all these people, as finally as the metallic hull of my ship shields me from the abyss of space.

Again, a man in a village.

The fires eventually died and the dancing stopped.

Alex was escorted to a house not far from the center of the village. The house was empty now, but the smells and the clutter testified to the fact that a family had been rather hastily evicted.

He was left alone.

He fumbled around with the aid of his pocket light and located a pile of moderately clean bedding. He climbed in, fully dressed, and waited for sleep.

It was a long time coming.

He lay in the darkness, his eyes wide open, listening to the scrabbling of tiny feet in the roof thatch over his head.

After some hours, he slept.

The first day was over.

There is waste-time, lost-time, in any field investigation. No matter what pressures you are under, there are certain things that you must do.

Here, there was seemingly endless discussion with the village elders who ultimately made whatever decisions were made. There was the careful cultivation of alliances, the constant refutation of rumors. There were people to meet, people to avoid. There were the usual time-consuming mechanics of housekeeping. Where do you get your food? Who cooks it? Where does the firewood come from? Who hauls the water?

And always, you must explain and explain and explain.

Alex had no time to spare. As the days went by, he knew that the men from the ship were cutting and trimming the poles, dragging them into position, executing his plan.

He did finally accomplish a few useful things.

He got a basket—

Peering into the stilt-supported granary, he was astonished at the size of the thing. The basket nearly filled the storage room. It must have been lowered into the structure before the roof was finished.

The basket was beautifully made. Tightly and intricately woven, it was covered with a brilliant blue design. The craftsmanship was all the more amazing because the basket was made to be used in everyday life; it was not a ceremonial object. Moreover, it was hidden from view inside the granary.

He gave very close attention to baskets. They were far superior to the relatively crude portable containers of the hunting Maburu.

He found a woman weaving a large basket that was nearly finished. He made a deal with her and arranged to pick the basket up when the design was completed.

That was something.

He recorded songs—

He went with the women into the fields. After they had gotten used to his presence, and had answered his questions about the agricultural cycle, they went on with their work. They sang soft little songs, individual songs, songs that told of drudgery and green living things and the magic of water and the solace of children.

He spent time with boys and girls, recording the songs that went with their games. He sat with the men at beer parties, catching songs that were partly drinking songs and partly long narrative chants that reviewed the surprising details of old legal cases.

The songs were good ones, and he got a lot of them.

And, with excitement, he got the Wiloto—

The old doctor was reluctant at first. He sat cross-legged in his smoky shadowed hut. His bright eyes were studiously blank. He knew nothing. He had no secrets. He was not really a doctor at all. Alex had been misinformed.

Alex persisted. He knew about medicine men. They were always special, always intelligent, always devious. Where there were witches, there were witch doctors. That was what a witch doctor was—a doctor that treated illness caused by witchcraft. The more serious the witchcraft problem, the more elaborate the techniques of the witch doctors tended to be.

And the new Maburu were infested by witches. It was a characteristic of densely populated farming villages.

So Alex stuck with it. He worked on the old boy, spent long hours with him, gave him presents. He showed him a trick or two that he had learned from other doctors on other worlds. He got his confidence.

And then he got the Wiloto.

The doctor sat impassively in the smoke-filled hut. He had his special bow resting across his knees. He wore a greasy cloak and a kind of square cap made of some faded animal skin.

Alex stayed back in the shadows.

The patient came in. He was a man about thirty years old. He was very thin and his hands were trembling. He could hardly walk. There was a film of sweat on his face. His eyes were clouded and dull.

The man sat before the doctor, swaying. He was close to collapse.

“I am bewitched,” he whispered. “I cannot eat. I am in pain. At night, I cannot sleep. You must help me. I will pay you well.”

The doctor smiled a toothless smile. “I know you, Kilatya. I know your family. You will be cured.”

“The witches-”

“I will know the witches and deal with them. That is why you came to me. It is good that you got here in time. Now, be silent. There are—others—who will help.”

The doctor picked up his bow. It was ornately carved and had a very thin, tight gut string. Half of a hollow gourd was inserted between the string and the bowshaft. He held the bow in one hand, the end against his shoulder, like a man playing a violin.

He took a short wand of polished wood and worked it over the taut bowstring, sometimes tapping it and sometimes sawing on it.

The effect was eerie in the gloomy hut.

The doctor began to chant in a monotone, calling on the ancestors. Other voices seemed to answer him, coming from the floor, the roof, the corners of the hut.

Alex smiled. The old boy was some ventriloquist.

The doctor put down his bow. “There, Kilatya. We know the names of the witches. It is as you suspected. There are two of them—your mother’s brother’s wife and the older sister of your second wife.”

Kilatya groaned. “I knew it, I knew it. They will surely kill me.”

“No. There are ways. We will consult the Wiloto.”

Kilatya trembled violently and was silent.

The doctor reached behind him and picked up a large object wrapped in a red cloth. He placed it between his legs. Slowly, he removed the cloth.

The Wiloto was a squat black pot. It sat on an attached tripod. It was covered with ivory-skull designs. The whole thing was about two feet high.

The doctor put his arms around the Wiloto, embracing it. He began to moan softly. His eyes grew very large and bright.

He put questions to the Wiloto.

The Wiloto answered him. In the gloom of the smoky hut, the Wiloto flashed blue signals. It was like a code of blinking blue light. The strange blue glow illuminated the hunching doctor’s face, on and off, on and off… .

“There,” the doctor said finally. “Now we know what to do.” He replaced the Wiloto in its red cloth and set it gingerly aside. He reached out and touched his patient comfortingly. “Follow my instructions, Kilatya, and you will be well again. You need fear the witches no more.”

He gave detailed orders about certain herbs, specific prayers, and precise protective spells. Then he sent Kilatya on his way. The man seemed stronger already.

“Very good,” Alex said, stepping out of the shadows. “I am impressed with your skill. I am impressed also by the Wiloto. Let me see it again, please.”

The old doctor smiled a sly smile and removed the red cloth. “See,” he said. “There is a shutter here.” He touched the neck of the black pot. “You squeeze it and it opens. Press it again and it closes.” He demonstrated.

“And the blue light?”

“There is a large glow-rock inside. It shines in the dark. I know where there are many such stones. It was a simple matter to build the Wiloto. The skill comes in knowing how to use it. A doctor must know many things.”

Alex breathed a sigh of relief. He had confidence in this one.

He spent the better part of two days with the doctor, explaining and offering and persuading.

Then he left as he had come, in the landing shuttle.

He carried with him his basket, his songs, and the Wiloto.

He figured that he had two days left before all the poles were in place.

Alex Porvenir felt good. He was very tired, but he was happy. He had been with Helen. He had eaten enough food to last him a week. The computer analysis was favorable.

And he was clean.

He fired up his pipe. Even that tasted good.

“Okay, Carlos,” he said. “You’ve seen the analysis. What’s your verdict?”

Carlos Coyanosa stared dubiously at the squat black pot with its design of ivory skulls. “Maybe I’m a little dense, Alex. I don’t quite get it.”

“It’s simplicity itself. Allow me to spell it out. The village Maburu make the Wiloto. We can get a good supply once we set up the market in the village. The computer says it will sell. It’s a fad item, to be sure, but a durable one. The supernatural is hot right now. There’s nothing like the Wiloto on earth, and never has been. A for-sure witch doctor’s oath pot, complete with skulls and a phosphorescent blue alien stone! Man, Caravans will make a killing on this one. The Wiloto will be so far in, it will stick out the other side!”

Carlos Coyanosa was a cautious man. As the senior Caravans representative aboard the lightship, he had to be. “Maybe, Alex. It looks good. I think it will make a profit for us. But exactly how does it tie in with our supply of bokix horns?”

Alex smiled broadly, with rather more confidence than he felt. “Inversely,” he said.

“I still don’t get it.”

“Look at it this way.” Alex knew he was on very thin ice. He adopted a very positive tone. “Caravans was getting a good product from the Maburu—bokix horns. The supply of that product was endangered because the Maburu were shifting away from a hunting style of life. My assignment was to maintain the Maburu as a product source. Okay, I’ve done that. We still have the Maburu, and we’ve got a product. We’ve simply exchanged bokix horns for the Wiloto. Everybody wins.”

Carlos Coyanosa stared at him. “You knew that your instructions meant that you should find a way to keep the bokix horns coming. You’re not a fool, Alex. Don’t play dumb with me.”

“I hope I’m not a fool,” Alex carefully refilled his pipe and lit it. “I hope you’re not, either. There was only one way I could ensure the supply of bokix horns for the long haul. That way was clearly illegal. It would have involved not only cultural manipulation that was not in the best interests of the people concerned, but also an effort on our part to retard normal cultural development. When the ET Council of the U.N. got hold of that one, it would blow us right out of the tub. I just couldn’t put Caravans in that position. If we want to go to the top with it, I doubt very much that Caravans will wish to argue that their plan involved suppression of cultural progress in order to preserve a profit. Do I make my point?”

Carlos Coyanosa was not a happy man. He suffered in silence for a very long two minutes. He weighed the alternatives. “You’ve done a remarkable piece of work,” he said finally.

“You do get the point.”

“I’d say that you’d made it crystal clear. What in the hell would you have done if there hadn’t been any Wiloto? I couldn’t sell those songs and we couldn’t push fifty giant baskets in fifty years.”

Alex smiled again. “I guess I’d just have stayed in that village. I always wanted to settle down, put down some roots— and the beer wasn’t half bad.”

“I hope your dream comes true in the near future,” Carlos Coyanosa said sincerely, and left to file his report.

*

“Look, I like hunters.” Alex Porvenir relaxed and sipped his Scotch. “Given my druthers, I’d stick with the old Maburu and more power to ‘em.”

“You sold them right smack down the river,” Tucker Olton said.

“How do you figure that?”

“You could have saved them. You didn’t even try.”

“Saved them from what? And how? The Maburu who still want to hunt can do so; they’ve got a free choice. We can still market a few bokix horns along with the Wiloto; they are not mutually exclusive. And the farming Maburu are people, too. Don’t forget that.”

“Those hunters are doomed and you know it.”

“In time, yes. In the long run, they can’t compete with the farmers for land and resources. But I didn’t do that, Tuck. I didn’t invent sociocultural natural selection, and I didn’t teach those people how to plant crops.”

“In fact, you didn’t do anything.”

Alex killed his drink and fixed another. “One thing you still have to learn, my friend. There are times, Caravans or no Caravans, when the best course of action is to do nothing at all. Just leave people alone. There are other times, of course, when you must act. But we play God too easily. It’s a disease of power.”

“I still don’t see-”

“Why I didn’t do something to preserve the hunters? I hate to be corny, but it would have been wrong. They appeal to me, they appeal to you, but so what? We can’t stick them on a reservation or stuff them as exhibits in a museum. What we’ve really got down there is a selfish situation. It takes a stable culture to guarantee a steady product flow—in this case, bokix horns. When the culture becomes unstable—when it starts to change—it’s only natural for Caravans to think in terms of putting the lid on. We want the original product because that’s what we’re geared to handle. But the Maburu are evolving whether they know it or not. This isn’t simply a case of some minor deviation that interferes with normal hunting. They have discovered agriculture, just as we did more than ten thousand years ago. The only way to stop them would be to deny them the right to their own future, whatever it turns out to be. We can’t force them backward—or at least I can’t.”

“Just let Mother Nature take her course, eh?”

“Sometimes the old gal knows what she’s doing.”

“It seems an odd thing for a man with your job to be saying, Alex.”

“Sometimes we can help her along a little—for our own interests, or that of Caravans, or to assist people in a really desperate situation. I’ve never argued that it’s always wrong to act when you’re in the right place at the right time. But, dammit, it’s not for us to sit on the sidelines and make romantic judgments about who is to survive and who is to go under. We’re not that smart—and we’re not that objective, either.”

“And all that jazz about cutting the poles and arranging them in neat little holes? What was that all about?”

Alex grinned. “Nothing. Nothing and everything. I had to take some action that would satisfy my superiors. So I took some action—I sent in a crew and put them to work doing something mysterious. The big boys never understand what we’re doing, anyway. Cutting the trees and shaping the poles and setting them up—it didn’t hurt anyone and it bought me the time to find a substitute product. That’s all. It was one of my better plans, I think.”

“That crew that broke their backs down there for weeks might not look at it that way. I’m glad I don’t have to face them and give them the word.”

“There’s no need for them to know, Tuck. We had a plan. They did their part. The plan worked. They weren’t wasting their time and effort. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Okay.” The younger man poured himself a drink. “And after all your work, what have we got?”

“Well, we’ve got the Wiloto. And we can sleep nights.”

“And the Maburu? What have they got?”

Alex Porvenir clasped his hands. “Maybe I’m getting old, Tuck. But we’ve given the Maburu the chance to be themselves. We’ve given them the right to go their own way, wherever it leads. I think that’s enough. I’m content, for once.”

The two men looked at each other, thinking of all the decisions they had made in the past and would have to make in the future.

“I’ll drink to that,” Tucker Olton said.