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Chapter Six

 

It was early morning in the village, Dahano stood in his doorway, looking out at the houses clustered tightly around the square. Between the closely-huddled walls, he could look out to the slope beyond the village where the fields he hated were stretched furrow on furrow, waiting to be worked.

Today the houses were smaller, he saw. The cattle would be back in their long shed, no man's property again. Chugren'd said he'd do it if Dahano didn't get the villagers to keep them out of the houses.

Dahano's lip curled. A slave has his weapons. Among them is defiance where the blame could be spread so wide the Master couldn't track it down. If Chugren asked, he could always say he'd told everyone. He couldn't be blamed if no one'd listened. It became everybody's fault.

It was only when one distinct person rebelled that an example could be made. There'd be none of those as long as Dahano was Headman. The village would lose as few people as possible. It would stay alive, save itself, wait—for generations, patiently, stubbornly, always waiting for the day when people could live as they ought to, in freedom.

He saw Chugren step into the middle of the square, and he stiffened.

"Dahano!"

"I hear, Chugren," Dahano muttered. He shuffled forward as slowly as he thought the Master would tolerate. He saw that Chugren was haggard. Dahano sneered behind his wooden face. Debauching himself in the comforts of his golden city, no doubt. None of the Masters ever came near the villages unless they absolutely had to, any more. "I hear." Liar. Tyrant.

"I took the cattle back."

Dahano nodded.

"That was the last of your freedoms."

"As the Master wishes."

Chugren's mouth winced with hurt. "I didn't like doing it. I don't like any of these things. I don't like penning you up in this village. But if I've got to watch you all, every minute, I've got to have you in one place."

"That's up to the Master."

"Is it?"

"What orders do you have for today, Master?"

Chugren reached out uncertainly, like a man trying to hold a handful of smoke. "I don't have any, Dahano. I was hoping this last thing— I'm trying to get something across to you. One last time— You were dying, Dahano. When we moved you back here, we saw little animals living in your stomach—"

Coldly, Dahano saw that Chugren actually did seem troubled. Good. Here was something to remember; one more way to strike back at the Master.

"All right, then," Chugren murmured. "It seems we're no smarter than your old Masters. Go out in the fields and raise your food." He turned and walked away, and then he was gone.

 

Dahano smiled thinly and went back to his hut. But he found Gulegath waiting.

The sight of the youngster was almost too much for Dahano to bear. As he saw that Gulegath himself was furious, Dahano almost lost control of the dignified blankness that was a Headman's only possible expression. What right had this young, perversely foolish person to be as angry as that? He wasn't Headman here. He wasn't old, with his hope first fanned and then drowned out in a few terrible days. He wouldn't ever know how close they'd all come to freedom, and how inexplicably they had lost it again.

"Well, Dahano—" Dahano saw the nearer villagers stiffen as the youngster called him by his name. "Well, Dahano—so we're slaves again."

"Do you mean that's my fault?" This was almost too far—almost too much for a person to say to him.

"You're Headman. You're responsible for us all." Dahano saw that all of Gulegath's anger—all his bitterness—were out of their flimsy cage and attacking only one man and one thing. For the first time, he saw a man in Gulegath's eyes. He saw a man who hated him.

"Can I defy the Masters?" There was a growing crowd of villagers around them.

"Can you not defy the Masters? Can you, somewhere, find the intelligence to try and work with them? You stubborn, willful old man! You won't change, you won't learn, you won't ever stop beating your head against a wall! Did it ever occur to you to learn anything about them? Did you ever try to convince them they could take the wall down?"

That was too far and too much.

"Are you questioning your Headman? Are you questioning the ways we have lived? Are you saying that the things we have held sacred, the things we have never permitted to die, are worthless?"

Gulegath's face was blazing. "I'm saying it!"

From a great distance within himself—from a peak of anger such as he had never known, Dahano spoke the ritual words no Headman in the memory of people had been forced to speak. But the words had been remembered, and told from father to son, down through the long years against this unthinkable day.

"You are a person of my village, but you have spoken against me. I am your Headman, and it is a Headman's duty to guard his village, to keep it from harm, and to remember the things of our fathers which have made us all the persons we are. Who speaks against his Headman speaks against himself."

The persons nearest Gulegath took his twisting arms and held him. They, too, had never heard these words spoken in real use, but they had known they must be today.

Suddenly, Gulegath's anger had gone out of him. Dahano felt some animal part of himself surge up gleefully as he saw Gulegath turn pale and weakly helpless. But he also saw the immovable clench in his jaw, and the naked anger as strong as ever in his eyes despite the fear that was rising with it.

"Kill me, then," Gulegath said in a high, desperate voice. "Kill me and dispose of all your troubles." Desperate it was—but it was unwavering, too, and Dahano's hands reached out for Gulegath's thin neck with less hesitation than they might have.

"A person is his village, and a village is its Headman. So all things are in the Headman, and no person can be permitted to destroy him, for he is the entire proper world.

"I do this thing to keep the village safe." His old hands went around Gulegath's throat. Gulegath said nothing, and waited, his eyes locked, with an effort, on Dahano's.

Chugren came back, and they were flung apart by his shoulders and arms, as though the Master had forgotten he had greater strengths.

"Stop that!"

The villagers fell back. Dahano got to his feet, wiping the dust of the ground out of his eyes. Gulegath was watching the Master carefully, uncertain of himself but certain enough to stand straight and probe Chugren's face. Chugren looked at Dahano.

"The Master commands," Dahano muttered.

"He does." Chugren looked sideward at Gulegath. "Why didn't you ever call attention to yourself before?"

Gulegath licked his lips. "I tend to save my bravery for times when it can't hurt me."

Dahano nodded scornfully. Gulegath had only rebelled in words. He'd been nothing like Borthen—for all that Borthen was needlessly dead.

"Times when it can't hurt you, eh? What about this time?"

Gulegath shrugged uncomfortably. "There's a limit, I suppose."

Chugren grunted. "I think we'll be keeping you. And thanks for the answer." Sudden pain came into his face. "And quite an answer it is, too."

"Answer?"

Chugren swung back toward Dahano. "Yes. So you know the proper ways to live, do you? You know how a person should keep his house, and work his ground, and grow his food, do you?"

The villagers were still.

"There are other worlds." Chugren drew himself up, touched his chest, and began to speak. His words rolled over the village in a voice of thunder.

"You're going to a far land, all of you. We can't stand the sight of you any more. We're going to send you to a place where you can live any way you please, and we'll be rid of you."

There was a swelling murmur from the villagers.

"What kind of place, Chugren?" Dahano demanded. "Some corner where we cannot ever hold up our heads—some corner from which we can never rise to challenge you?"

Chugren shook his head. "No, Headman. A world exactly like this. If we can't find one that fits, then we'll change one to suit. There'll be plains like these, and soil that'll accept your plants, and fodder for your cattle."

"I don't believe you."

"Suit yourself. We're going to do it."

Now Dahano, once again, couldn't be sure of what to think.

Gulegath touched Chugren's arm. "What's the catch?"

"Catch?"

"Don't sidestep. If that was the whole answer, you could reach it by simply leaving us alone here."

Chugren sighed. "All right. The day'll be one hour shorter."

Dahano frowned over that. One hour shorter? How could that be? A day was so many hours—how could there be a day if there weren't hours enough to fill it?

He preoccupied himself with this puzzle. He failed to understand what Gulegath and Chugren were talking about meanwhile.

"I . . . see—" Gulegath was saying slowly. "The plants. . . they'll grow, but—"

"But they won't ripen. Unless the villages move nearer the equator. And if that happens, nothing will be right for the climate—neither the houses, nor the clothes, nor any of the things your people know. But we won't move them. We won't change them. And all the rules will almost work."

Dahano listened without understanding. How could simply moving to another place change the kind of house a person needed?

Gulegath was looking down at the ground. "A great many people will die."

"But to a purpose."

"Yes, I suppose."

"What else can we do, Gulegath? We can't push them. They'll have to change of themselves." Chugren put his arm around Gulegath's shoulders. "Come on," he said like a man anxious to get away from a place where he has committed murder.

Gulegath shook his head. "I think I'll stay." He looked around at the villagers. "I seem to want to go with them."

"They'll kill you. We won't be around to stop them."

"I think they'll be too busy."

Chugren looked at him for a long moment. Then he took a deep breath, started a gesture, and went away.

Gulegath looked around again, shook his head to himself, and then walked slowly back toward his hut. The villagers moved slowly out of his way, mystified and upset by something they saw in his face.

Dahano looked after him. So you think you'll be Headman after me, he thought. You think you'll be the new Headman, in the new land.

Well, perhaps you will. If you're clever enough and quick enough. I don't know—there's something you seem to know that I don't—perhaps you'll make another error so I can kill you for it. I wish—

I don't know. But you'll pay your price, no matter what happens. You'll learn what it is to be Headman. And you won't have the words of your fathers to help you, because you've never listened.

Dahano began walking across the square, ignoring the villagers because he had nothing to say to them. He thought of what it would be like, the day they would all be filing aboard the Masters' sky boats, carrying their belongings, driving their cattle before them, and he thought back to the night he'd looked up and seen lights in the sky.

Omens. For good or for bad?

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